The Causes of His Woe (Macgregor)
Love, Fortune, and my ever-faithful mind,Which loathes the present in its memoried past,So wound my spirit, that on all I castAn envied thought who rest in darkness find.My heart Love prostrates, Fortune more unkindNo comfort grants, until its sorrow vastImpotent frets, then melts to tears at last:Thus I to painful warfare am consign'd.My halcyon days I hope not to return,But paint my future by a darker tint;My spring is gone--my summer well-nigh fled:Ah! wretched me! too well do I discernEach hope is now (unlike the diamond flint)A fragile mirror, with its fragments shed.
Words in this poem
- unkind a.
- Having no race or kindred; childless. [See Kin kindred.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Causes of His Woe (Macgregor) 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, The Causes of His Woe (Macgregor), in The Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems (1859), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17650, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petrarch-sonnets/the-causes-of-his-woe-macgregor.html, id L14637.
Form and metre
The Causes of His Woe (Macgregor) 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 93%).
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 mindA · pastB · castB · findA · unkindA · vastB · lastB · consign'dA · returnC · tintD · fledC · discernD · flintC · shedD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Love, Fortune, and my ever-faithful mind, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Which loathes the present in its memoried past, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| So wound my spirit, that on all I cast | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| An envied thought who rest in darkness find. | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| My heart Love prostrates, Fortune more unkind | 10 | ···/˘/˘·˘/ |
| No comfort grants, until its sorrow vast | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Impotent frets, then melts to tears at last: | 10 | /˘˘······· |
| Thus I to painful warfare am consign'd. | 10 | ···/˘/··˘/ |
| My halcyon days I hope not to return, | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| But paint my future by a darker tint; | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| My spring is gone--my summer well-nigh fled: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Ah! wretched me! too well do I discern | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| Each hope is now (unlike the diamond flint) | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| A fragile mirror, with its fragments shed. | 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.