Love

Sonnet CXLV (In Life): He Hears the Voice of Reason, but Cannot Obey

by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) 1304–1374

Translated by Major Macgregor (in Bohn, 1879) · From To Laura in Life

Love

Love in one instant spurs me and restrains,
Assures and frightens, freezes me and burns,
Smiles now and scowls, now summons me and spurns,
In hope now holds me, plunges now in pains:
Now high, now low, my weary heart he hurls,
Until fond passion loses quite the path,
And highest pleasure seems to stir but wrath--
My harass'd mind on such strange errors feeds!
A friendly thought there points the proper track,
Not of such grief as from the full eye breaks,
To go where soon it hopes to be at ease,
But, as if greater power thence turn'd it back,
Despite itself, another way it takes,
And to its own slow death and mine agrees.

MLA

Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet CXLV (In Life): He Hears the Voice of Reason, but Cannot Obey.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/177/.

Chicago

Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet CXLV (In Life): He Hears the Voice of Reason, but Cannot Obey.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/177/.

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