Explore "Qual Donna Attende a Gloriosa Fama" by Francesco Petrarca on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE EYES OF LAURA ARE THE SCHOOL OF VIRTUE.
Feels any fair the glorious wish to gain / Of sense, of worth, of courtesy, the praise? / On those bright eyes attentive let her gaze / Of her miscall'd my love, but sure my foe.
Honour to gain, with love of God to glow, / Virtue more bright how native grace displays, / May there be learn'd; and by what surest ways / To heaven, that for her coming pants, to go.
The converse sweet, beyond what poets write, / Is there; the winning silence, and the meek / And saint-like manners man would paint in vain.
The matchless beauty, dazzling to the sight, / Can ne'er be learn'd; for bootless 'twere to seek / By art, what by kind chance alone we gain.
ANON., OX., 1795.