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You who hear in scattered rhymes the sound of those sighs with which I nourished my heart during my first youthful error, when I was in part another man from what I am now:
for the varied style in which I weep and speak between vain hopes and vain sorrow, where there is anyone who understands love through experience, I hope to find pity, not only pardon.
But now I see well for a time I was talk to the crowd, for which often I am ashamed of myself within; and of now raving, shame is the fruit, and repentance, and the clear knowledge that whatever pleases in the world is a brief dream.
- Petrarch, Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta
- Wikisource - Translated by Robert M. Durling