Love
Sonnet XLIX (In Life): He Entreats Laura Not to Hate the Heart from Which She Can Never Be Absent
Translated by Major Macgregor (in Bohn, 1879) · From To Laura in Life
If, but by angry and disdainful sign,
By the averted head and downcast sight,
By readiness beyond thy sex for flight,
Deaf to all pure and worthy prayers of mine,
Thou canst, by these or other arts of thine,
'Scape from my breast--where Love on slip so slight
Grafts every day new boughs--of such despite
A fitting cause I then might well divine:
For gentle plant in arid soil to be
Seems little suited: so it better were,
And this e'en nature dictates, thence to stir.
But since thy destiny prohibits thee
Elsewhere to dwell, be this at least thy care
Not always to sojourn in hatred there.
Cite this poem
MLA
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet XLIX (In Life): He Entreats Laura Not to Hate the Heart from Which She Can Never Be Absent.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/63/.
Chicago
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet XLIX (In Life): He Entreats Laura Not to Hate the Heart from Which She Can Never Be Absent.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/63/.
Read this poem with the Codex →
More by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
- Sonnet XXXII (In Life): He Asks from a Friend the Loan of the Works of St. Augustin
- Sonnet XCIII (In Life): Wherever He is, He Sees Only Laura
- Sonnet CLVI (In Life): Under the Figure of a Tempest-Tossed Vessel, He Describes His Own Sad State
- Sonnet CCXXIV (In Life): Honour to Be Preferred to Life
- Sonnet LXII (In Death): Beauty Showed Itself in, and Disappeared with, Laura