Memory is his only Solace and Support (Solea Dalla Fontana DI Mia Vita) by Francesco Petrarca

I who was wont from life's best fountain far / So long to wander, searching land and sea, / Pursuing not my pleasure, but my star, / And alway, as Love knows who strengthen'd me, / Ready in bitter exile to depart, / For hope and memory both then fed my heart; / Alas! now wring my hands, and to unkind / And angry Fortune, which away has reft / That so sweet hope, my armour have resign'd; / And, memory only left, / I feed my great desire on that alone, / Whence frail and famish'd is my spirit grown.

As haply by the way, if want of food / Compel the traveller to relax his speed, / Losing that strength which first his steps endued, / So feeling, for my weary life, the need / Of that dear nourishment Death rudely stole, / Leaving the world all bare, and sad my soul, / From time to time fair pleasures pall, my sweet / To bitter turns, fear rises, and hopes fail, / My course, though brief, that I shall e'er complete: / Cloudlike before the gale, / To win some resting-place from rest I flee, / If such indeed my doom, so let it be.

Never to mortal life could I incline, / Be witness, Love, with whom I parley oft -- / Except for her who was its light and mine.

And since, below extinguish'd, shines aloft / The life in which I lived, if lawful 'twere, / My chief desire would be to follow her: / But mine is ample cause of grief, for I / To see my future fate was ill supplied; / This Love reveal'd within her beauteous eye / Elsewhere my hopes to guide: / Too late he dies, disconsolate and sad, / Whom death a little earlier had made glad.

In those bright eyes, where wont my heart to dwell, / Until by envy my hard fortune stirr'd / Rose from so rich a temple to expel, / Love with his proper hand had character'd / In lines of pity what, ere long, I ween / The issue of my old desire had been.

Dying alone, and not my life with me, / Comely and sweet it then had been to die, / Leaving my life's best part unscathed and free; / But now my fond hopes lie / Dead in her silent dust: a secret chill / Shoots through me when I think that I live still.

If my poor intellect had but the force / To help my need, and if no other lure / Had led it from the plain and proper course, / Upon my lady's brow 'twere easy sure / To have read this truth, "Here all thy pleasure dies, / And hence thy lifelong trial dates its rise. " / My spirit then had gently pass'd away / In her dear presence from all mortal care; / Freed from this troublesome and heavy clay, / Mounting, before her, where / Angels and saints prepared on high her place, / Whom I but follow now with slow sad pace.

My song! if one there be / Who in his love finds happiness and rest, / Tell him this truth from me, / "Die, while thou still art bless'd, / For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, / And who can rightly die needs no delay."

MACGREGOR.