Canzone 19
There are creatures in the world with such other
vision that it is protected from the full sun:
yet others, because the great light offends them
cannot move around until the evening falls:

and others with mad desire, that hope
perhaps to delight in fire, because it gleams,
prove the other power, that which burns:
alas, and my place is with these last.

I am not strong enough to gaze at the light
of that lady, and do not know how to make a screen
from shadowy places, or the late hour:

yet, with weeping and infirm eyes, my fate
leads me to look on her: and well I know
I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.

Petrarch, translated by AS Kline