| Samuel Waddington, comp. The Sonnets of Europe. 1888. | | | | Lonely and Pensive | | By Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) |
| | Translated by Hartley Coleridge
Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi.
LONELY and pensive o’er the lonely strand, | |
| “With wandering steps and slow,” I loiter on, | |
| My eyes at watch, to warn me to be gone | |
| If mark of human foot impress the sand; | |
| Else would my piteous plight be rudely scann’d, | 5 |
| And curious folk would stare to see the wan | |
| And deathlike images of joy foregone, | |
| And how I inly waste like smouldering brand. | |
| Or I would fain believe the tangled wood | |
| Which girds the small field on the mountain side | 10 |
| The one sole witness to my crazy mood; | |
| But ah! what sandy waste, or forest dim, | |
| My haunt obscure from Love can ever hide? | |
| Where’er I think, I converse hold with him. | | | | |
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