Love
Sonnet XXXVIII (In Death): Love and He Seek Laura, but Find No Traces of Her Except in the Sky
Translated by Major Macgregor (in Bohn, 1879) · From To Laura in Death
That sun, which ever signall'd the right road,
Where flash'd her own bright feet, to heaven to fly,
Returning to the Eternal Sun on high,
Has quench'd my light, and cast her earthly load;
Thus, lone and weary, my oft steps have trode,
As some wild animal, the sere woods by,
Fleeing with heavy heart and downcast eye
The world which since to me a blank has show'd.
Still with fond search each well-known spot I pace
Where once I saw her: Love, who grieves me so,
My only guide, directs me where to go.
I find her not: her every sainted trace
Seeks, in bright realms above, her parent star
From grisly Styx and black Avernus far.
Cite this poem
MLA
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet XXXVIII (In Death): Love and He Seek Laura, but Find No Traces of Her Except in the Sky.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/305/.
Chicago
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet XXXVIII (In Death): Love and He Seek Laura, but Find No Traces of Her Except in the Sky.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/305/.
Read this poem with the Codex →
More by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
- Sonnet XLVIII (In Life): Conscious of His Folly, He Prays God to Turn Him to a Better Life
- Canzone XVIII (In Life): He Compares Himself to All That is Most Strange in Creation
- Sonnet CLXXIII (In Life): Journeying Along the Rhone to Avignon, Petrarch Bids the River Kiss Laura's Hand, as It Will Arrive at Her Dwelling Before Him
- Sonnet XIII (In Death): Her Form Still Haunts Him in Solitude
- Sonnet LXXXII (In Death): He Awakes to a Conviction of the Near Approach of Death