Petrarch: A White Deer (Una candida cerva)

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White Fallow Deer (Dama dama), doe, on a misty morning, near Argonne National Laboratory, Westmont, Illinois: photo by Argonne National Laboratory, 29 September 2009

Una candida cerva sopra l’erba
verde m’apparve, con duo corna d’oro,
fra due riviere, all’ombra d’un alloro,
levando ’l sole a la stagione acerba.

Era sua vista sí dolce superba,
ch’i’ lasciai per seguirla ogni lavoro:
come l’avaro che ’n cercar tesoro
con diletto l’affanno disacerba.

"Nessun mi tocchi" -- al bel collo d’intorno
scritto avea di diamanti et di topazi -- :
"libera farmi al mio Cesare parve ".

Et era ’l sol già vòlto al mezzo giorno,
gli occhi miei stanchi di mirar, non sazi,
quand’io caddi ne l’acqua, et ella sparve.




A white doe on the grass appeared to me, with two golden horns, between two rivers, in the shade of a laurel, when the sun was rising in the unripe season. So pleasant-proud was its appearance that I left my work, and, like a miser, in whom the pleasure of hunting the treasure mitigates the inherent vexations, I followed the hind. "Let no one touch me," she bore written with diamonds and topazes round her lovely neck. "It has pleased Caesar to make me free." The sun had reached midday when, my eyes weary but not satiated with gazing, I fell into the water, and the hind disappeared.


Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304-1374): Rime 190, from Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta)

Piebald deer (doe), Hampton, Virginia: photo by Nedlym, 5 July 2009

White Fallow Deer (Dama dama), Beijing Zoo: photo by Henripekka Kallio, 18 August 2005



Fallow Deer (Dama dama), three colour variants, at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, Glen Rose, Texas: photo by Courtney Kahler, 13 November 2010



Fallow Deer (Dama dama), doe: photo by Richard Bartz, 1 January 2008



Fallow Deer (Dama dama), doe, Gaziantep Zoo: photo by Nevit Dilmen, 31 October 2009



Fallow Deer (Dama dama), at Avon Valley Country Park, Keynsham, Bristol, England: photo by Adrian Pingstone, August 2007



Fallow Deer (Dama dama), Rapperswil Castle, Switzerland: photo by Roland zh, 29 May 2010