Sonnet 190
A doe of purest white upon green grass
wearing two horns of gold appeared to me
between two streams beneath a laurel’s shade
at sunrise in that season not yet ripe.
The sight of her was so sweetly austere
that I left all my work to follow her,
just like a miser who in search of treasure
with pleasure makes his effort bitterless.
‘No one touch me,’ around her lovely neck
was written out in diamonds and in topaz,
‘It pleased my Caesar to create me free.’
The sun by now had climbed the sky midway
my eyes were tired but not full from looking
when I fell into water, and she vanished.
Petrarch
l noelle mclaughlin 