Petrarch: Rime Sparse 190

Written By Ryan Wilson

Ryan Wilson (translator)

A white doe in the green grass of a glade
Appeared to me with two horns made of gold,
Between two rivers in a laurel’s shade,
Sun rising in a bitter season’s cold.
So sweet and lofty was her look, I fled
All work to chase her, as a miser might,
While seeking out some prize with breathless dread,
Make his pursuit less bitter with delight.
“Let none touch me,” her fair neck testified,
With diamonds and topaz on a band.
“To make me free has pleased my Caesar.” And
The sun already had passed noon; eyes bleared
With marveling, yet still unsatisfied,
I fell into the water, and she disappeared. 

Ryan Wilson

Ryan Wilson was born in Griffin, Georgia, in 1982, and raised in nearby Macon. His books include The Stranger World (Measure, 2017), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, How to Think Like a Poet (Wiseblood, 2019), and Proteus Bound: Selected Translations 2008-20 (Franciscan UP, 2021). His work appears widely in periodicals such as Best American Poetry, Birmingham Poetry Review, First Things, Five Points, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, The Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review. Co-editor of the anthology, Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Paraclete, 2022), he is Editor-in-Chief of Literary Matters, and he teaches at The Catholic University of America and in the M.F.A. program at the University of St. Thomas—Houston.

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