Read "Memory is his only Solace and Support (Solea Dalla Fontana DI Mia Vita)" by Francesco Petrarca online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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.