Obsessive Male Gaze
Aside from niceties of verse form (and the medieval Italian that it's written in), this is one sure-fire way to verify the parentage of Petrarch's poetry. He can never be separated from his beloved Laura—whether she likes it or not. Since that's the case, you can almost always tell you're looking at a piece of Petrarchan verse by lines like these:
How often I would say
at that time, full of awe:
"For certain she was born up there in Heaven!"
And her divine behavior,
her face and words and her sweet smile
so filled me with forgetfulness
and divided me
from the true image
that I would sigh and say:
"Just how and when did I come here?" (53-62)
Petrarch's eyes are full of Laura's beauty and consequently so are his mind and memory. His gaze extends to the places Laura occupied—the bankside, the church where they first met—so that Laura's body, though never immediately present to him in his later life, is always before his mind's eye. It's no wonder, then, that his ever-burning look is the thing to watch out for in this poetry.