Sonnet from Petrarch

Through the green leaves if summer zephyrs move—
     Or pours its canticle some sorrowing bird—
     Or from the wave rough murmurings are heard—
If on some flowery bank I dream of love,—
     Heaven to my eye, and ear, and heart, reveals
     Her—the beloved—whom envious earth conceals!
And still I live, though from afar to sigh
     Responsive to her voice. “Alas!” said she,
In accents of divinest pity, “why
     Consume thy time in grief! Oh, not for me
Pour from thy sorrowing eyes continual tears—
     For death to me was life and sweet repose,
     And when my eyes on earth appeared to close
They opened in the light of heavenly spheres!”