If you want to find out more about Petrarch, there are several excellent biographies/histories on Amazon.

 

 

If you ‘d like to see/listen to other poems I’ve read by Petrarch, go here:
Petrarch on The Daily Sonnet

Here’s the translation by A.S. Kline of sonnet #3 by Petrarch.

It was on that day when the sun’s ray
was darkened in pity for its Maker
that I was captured, and did not defend myself,
because your lovely eyes had bound me, Lady.

It did not seem to me to be a time to guard myself
against Love’s blows: so I went on
confident, unsuspecting; from that, my troubles
started, amongst the public sorrows.

Love discovered me all weaponless,
and opened the way to the heart through the eyes,
which are made the passageways and doors of tears:

so that it seems to me it does him little honour
to wound me with his arrow, in that state,
he not showing his bow at all to you who are armed.