Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79.

Vaucluse

He Esteems Everything Happy That Surrounds Laura’s Habitation

By Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374)

BRIGHT happy flowers! and herb so bounteous fed,

O’er which my Laura’s modelled foot hath stept:

Ye meads! that have her words’ sweet music kept,

Nor yet restored the impress of her tread:

Unfettered shrubs! ye leaves so freshly shed!

Pale violets! where Love hath fondly crept;

Ye woods! whose shade doth Phœbus intercept,

And in his stolen beams so proudly spread!

Sweet landscape! stream! that doth so purely roam,

From laving oft her beauteous face and eyes,

Thou wanderest clear in their reflected light:

I envy ye, so near her modest home!

No rock among ye habit’s law defies,

But owns alike the flame my soul doth blight.