Explore "Dolci Durezze E Placide Repulse" by Francesco Petrarca on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
HE OWES HIS OWN SALVATION TO THE VIRTUOUS CONDUCT OF LAURA.
O sweet severity, repulses mild, / With chasten'd love, and tender pity fraught; / Graceful rebukes, that to mad passion taught / Becoming mastery o'er its wishes wild; / Speech dignified, in which, united, smiled / All courtesy, with purity of thought; / Virtue and beauty, that uprooted aught / Of baser temper had my heart defiled: / Eyes, in whose glance man is beatified -- / Awful, in pride of virtue, to restrain / Aspiring hopes that justly are denied, / Then prompt the drooping spirit to sustain! / These, beautiful in every change, supplied / Health to my soul, that else were sought in vain.
DACRE.