Love
Sonnet LIX (In Life): If His Passion Still Increase, He Must Soon Die
Translated by Major Macgregor (in Bohn, 1879) · From To Laura in Life
If, of this fourteenth year wherein I sigh,
The end and middle with its opening vie,
Nor air nor shade can give me now release,
I feel mine ardent passion so increase:
For Love, with whom my thought no medium knows,
Beneath whose yoke I never find repose,
So rules me through these eyes, on mine own ill
Too often turn'd, but half remains to kill.
Thus, day by day, I feel me sink apace,
And yet so secretly none else may trace,
Save she whose glances my fond bosom tear.
Scarcely till now this load of life I bear
Nor know how long with me will be her stay,
For death draws near, and hastens life away.
Cite this poem
MLA
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet LIX (In Life): If His Passion Still Increase, He Must Soon Die.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/78/.
Chicago
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). “Sonnet LIX (In Life): If His Passion Still Increase, He Must Soon Die.” Translated by Major Macgregor. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/petrarch/78/.
Read this poem with the Codex →
More by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
- Sonnet XIX (In Life): His Heart, Rejected by Laura, Will Perish, Unless She Relent
- Sonnet LXXVI (In Life): He Deplores His Lost Liberty and the Unhappiness of His Present State
- Sonnet CXXXVII (In Life): Love Unmans His Resolution
- Sonnet CCVI (In Life): To a Friend, in Love Like Himself, He Can Give No Advice but to Raise His Soul to God
- Sonnet XLIX (In Death): Death Has Robbed Him in One Moment of the Fruit of His Life