The Mind

Sonnet IV: The Soul

by Tommaso Campanella 1568–1639

Translated by John Addington Symonds (1878) · From Sonnets (trans. Symonds, 1878)

The Mind

A handful of brain holds me: I consume
So much that all the books the world contains,
Cannot allay my furious famine-pains:--
What feasts were mine! Yet hunger is my doom.
With one world Aristarchus fed my greed;
This finished, others Metrodorus gave;
Yet, stirred by restless yearning, still I crave:
The more I know, the more to learn I need.
Thus I'm an image of that Sire in whom
All beings are, like fishes in the sea;
That one true object of the loving mind.
Reasoning may reach Him, like a shaft shot home;
The Church may guide; but only blest is he
Who loses self in God, God's self to find.

MLA

Campanella, Tommaso. “Sonnet IV: The Soul.” Translated by John Addington Symonds. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/campanella/3/.

Chicago

Campanella, Tommaso. “Sonnet IV: The Soul.” Translated by John Addington Symonds. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/campanella/3/.

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