Love
Sonnet CXXXVI (In Life): His Tongue is Tied by Excess of Passion
Translated by Sir Thomas Wyatt (in Bohn, 1879) · From To Laura in Life
Such vain thought as wonted to mislead me
In desert hope, by well-assurèd moan,
Makes me from company to live alone,
In following her whom reason bids me flee.
She fleeth as fast by gentle cruelty;
And after her my heart would fain be gone,
But armèd sighs my way do stop anon,
'Twixt hope and dread locking my liberty;
Yet as I guess, under disdainful brow
One beam of ruth is in her cloudy look:
Which comforteth the mind, that erst for fear shook:
And therewithal bolded I seek the way how
To utter the smart I suffer within;
But such it is, I not how to begin.
Cite this poem
MLA
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet CXXXVI (In Life): His Tongue is Tied by Excess of Passion.” Translated by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/168/.
Chicago
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet CXXXVI (In Life): His Tongue is Tied by Excess of Passion.” Translated by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/168/.
Read this poem with the Codex →
More by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
- Sonnet XLIII (In Life): Blighted Hope
- Canzone XVII (In Life): Distance and Solitude
- Sonnet CLXXII (In Life): He Consoles Himself with the Thought That He Will Be Envied by Posterity
- Sonnet X (In Death): He Desires to Die, That His Soul May Be with Her, as His Thoughts Already Are
- Sonnet LXXIX (In Death): He Tells Her in Sleep of His Sufferings, and, Overcome by Her Sympathy, Awakes