After Petrarch — Due gran nemiche inseme erano agiunte

When Beauty made its peace with Chastity
and came to dwell with Laura, there arose
no thought of strife between once deadly foes.
Her holy soul had caused them to agree:

a truce which Death has sundered. In the skies
one of the two is vaunted and renowned;
the other — flesh and blood — hides underground
the darts that pierced me from her loving eyes.

Her gracious manner and her modest speech;
her glance (from which my wounded heart still bleeds):
these virtues now have slipped beyond my reach

and, if I’m slow to follow where she leads,
perhaps my weary pen, in after times,
will consecrate my Laura with these rhymes.