Love

Sonnet XXVII: No Escape from Love

by Michelangelo Buonarroti 1475–1564

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

Love

I cannot by the utmost flight of thought
Conceive another form of air or clay,
Wherewith against thy beauty to array
My wounded heart in armour fancy-wrought:
For, lacking thee, so low my state is brought,
That Love hath stolen all my strength away;
Whence, when I fain would halve my griefs, they weigh
With double sorrow, and I sink to nought.
Thus all in vain my soul to scape thee flies,
For ever faster flies her beauteous foe:
From the swift-footed feebly run the slow!
Yet with his hands Love wipes my weeping eyes,
Saying, this toil will end in happy cheer;
What costs the heart so much, must needs be dear!

MLA

Buonarroti, Michelangelo. “Sonnet XXVII: No Escape from Love.” Translated by John Addington Symonds. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/michelangelo/27/.

Chicago

Buonarroti, Michelangelo. “Sonnet XXVII: No Escape from Love.” Translated by John Addington Symonds. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/michelangelo/27/.

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