Page:Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti.djvu/47

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Sonnets

SONNET IX

At last I am reduced to self compassion,
For the sore anguish that I see me in;
At my great weakness; that my semi hath been
Concealed beneath her wounds in such a fashion:
Such mine oppression that I know, in brief,
That to my life ill’s worst starred ills befall;
And this strange lady on whose grace I call
Maintains continuous my stour of grief,
For when I look in her direction,
She turns upon me her disdeigning eyen
So harshly that my waiting heart is rent
And all my powers and properties are spent,
Till that heart lieth for a sign ill-seen,
Where Amor’s cruelty hath hurled him down.

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