Explore "S' Io Fossi Stato Fermo Alla Spelunca" by Francesco Petrarca on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
TO ONE WHO DESIRED LATIN VERSE OF HIM.
Still had I sojourn'd in that Delphic cave / Where young Apollo prophet first became, / Verona, Mantua were not sole in fame, / But Florence, too, her poet now might have: / But since the waters of that spring no more / Enrich my land, needs must that I pursue / Some other planet, and, with sickle new, / Reap from my field of sticks and thorns its store.
Dried is the olive: elsewhere turn'd the stream / Whose source from famed Parnassus was derived.
Whereby of yore it throve in best esteem.
Me fortune thus, or fault perchance, deprived / Of all good fruit -- unless eternal Jove / Shower on my head some favour from above.
MACGREGOR.