Love
Sonnet CXLV (In Life): He Hears the Voice of Reason, but Cannot Obey
Translated by Major Macgregor (in Bohn, 1879) · From To Laura in Life
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.
Cite this poem
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/.
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 CXLIII (In Life): Ever Thinking on Her, He Passes Fearless and Safe Through the Forest of Ardennes
- 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