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No stars adrift in peaceful skies,
no ships that drift through tranquil seas,
no fields of clanging cavalries,
no woods where wildlife runs and flies,
 
no promise of a long-sought prize,
no love expressed in rhapsodies,
no glades or streams where melodies
of chaste and graceful ladies rise,
 
nor other things can lift my heart
for she who was my only light
and mirror shrouded it from me.
 
Life brings such grinding pain I start
to cry for death and clearer sight
of someone better not to see.

 
(translated from the Italian of Petrarch)