His Nights Are, Like His Days, Passed in Torment
When in the sea sinks the sun's golden light,And on my mind and nature darkness lies,With the pale moon, faint stars and clouded skiesI pass a weary and a painful night:To her who hears me not I then rehearseMy sad life's fruitless toils, early and late;And with the world and with my gloomy fate,With Love, with Laura and myself, converse.Sleep is forbid me: I have no repose,But sighs and groans instead, till morn returns,And tears, with which mine eyes a sad heart feeds;Then comes the dawn, the thick air clearer grows,But not my soul; the sun which in it burnsAlone can cure the grief his fierce warmth breeds.
Words in this poem
- fruitless a.
- Lacking, or not bearing, fruit; barren; destitute of offspring; as, a fruitless tree or shrub; a fruitless marriage.
- laura n.
- A number of hermitages or cells in the same neighborhood occupied by anchorites who were under the same superior. C. Kingsley.
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
- clearer n.
- One who, or that which, clears.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
His Nights Are, Like His Days, Passed in Torment is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #17650, the various hands translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Petrarch, His Nights Are, Like His Days, Passed in Torment, in The Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems (1859), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17650, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petrarch-sonnets/his-nights-are-like-his-days-passed-in-torment.html, id L14780.
Form and metre
His Nights Are, Like His Days, Passed in Torment is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBAABBACDCDCD, the pattern of the Italian sonnet. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 21% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other Italian sonnets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBAABBACDCDCD lightA · liesB · skiesB · nightA · rehearseA · lateB · fateB · converseA · reposeC · returnsD · feedsC · growsD · burnsC · breedsD
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When in the sea sinks the sun's golden light, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And on my mind and nature darkness lies, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| With the pale moon, faint stars and clouded skies | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| I pass a weary and a painful night: | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| To her who hears me not I then rehearse | 10 | ········˘/ |
| My sad life's fruitless toils, early and late; | 10 | ···/˘·/˘·· |
| And with the world and with my gloomy fate, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| With Love, with Laura and myself, converse. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘/ |
| Sleep is forbid me: I have no repose, | 10 | ··˘/····˘/ |
| But sighs and groans instead, till morn returns, | 10 | ····˘/··˘/ |
| And tears, with which mine eyes a sad heart feeds; | 10 | ·········· |
| Then comes the dawn, the thick air clearer grows, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| But not my soul; the sun which in it burns | 10 | ·········· |
| Alone can cure the grief his fierce warmth breeds. | 10 | ˘/········ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.