Love
Sonnet LXXXIV (In Life): After Fifteen Years Her Eyes Are More Powerful Than at First
Translated by Major Macgregor (in Bohn, 1879) · From To Laura in Life
No hope of respite, of escape no way,
Her bright eyes wage such constant havoc here;
Alas! excess of tyranny, I fear,
My doting heart, which ne'er has truce, will slay:
Fain would I flee, but ah! their amorous ray,
Which day and night on memory rises clear,
Shines with such power, in this the fifteenth year,
They dazzle more than in love's early day.
So wide and far their images are spread
That wheresoe'er I turn I alway see
Her, or some sister-light on hers that fed.
Springs such a wood from one fair laurel tree,
That my old foe, with admirable skill,
Amid its boughs misleads me at his will.
Cite this poem
MLA
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet LXXXIV (In Life): After Fifteen Years Her Eyes Are More Powerful Than at First.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/106/.
Chicago
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet LXXXIV (In Life): After Fifteen Years Her Eyes Are More Powerful Than at First.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/106/.
Read this poem with the Codex →
More by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
- Sestina II (In Life): Though Despairing of Pity, He Vows to Love Her Unto Death
- Sonnet LXXXII (In Life): To Stefano Colonna, Counselling Him to Follow Up His Victory over the Orsini
- Sonnet CXLVII (In Life): To the River Po, on Quitting Laura
- Sonnet CCXV (In Life): He Sighs for Those Glances from Which, to His Grief, Fortune Ever Delights to Withdraw Him
- Sonnet LV (In Death): Death May Deprive Him of the Sight of Her Beauties, but Not of the Memory of Her Virtues