To a Friend, Counselling Him to Abandon Earthly Pleasures (Wrangham)
Friend, as we both in confidence complainTo see our ill-placed hopes return in vain,Let that chief good which must for ever pleaseExalt our thought and fix our happiness.This world as some gay flowery field is spread,Which hides a serpent in its painted bed,And most it wounds when most it charms our eyes,At once the tempter and the paradise.And would you, then, sweet peace of mind restore,And in fair calm expect your parting hour,Leave the mad train, and court the happy few.Well may it be replied, "O friend, you showOthers the path, from which so often youHave stray'd, and now stray farther than before."
Words in this poem
- tempter n.
- One who tempts or entices; especially, Satan, or the Devil, regarded as the great enticer to evil.
- expect v. t.
- To wait for; to await. [L. expectatum, to look out for, await, expect; ex + out spectare to look at. See Spectacle.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To a Friend, Counselling Him to Abandon Earthly Pleasures (Wrangham) 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, To a Friend, Counselling Him to Abandon Earthly Pleasures (Wrangham), in The Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems (1859), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17650, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petrarch-sonnets/to-a-friend-counselling-him-to-abandon-earthly-pleasures-wrangham.html, id L14605.
Form and metre
To a Friend, Counselling Him to Abandon Earthly Pleasures (Wrangham) 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 85%).
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 complainA · vainB · pleaseB · happinessA · spreadA · bedB · eyesB · paradiseA · restoreC · hourD · fewC · showD · youC · beforeD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Friend, as we both in confidence complain | 10 | ·····/˘˘˘/ |
| To see our ill-placed hopes return in vain, | 10 | ··/···˘/·· |
| Let that chief good which must for ever please | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Exalt our thought and fix our happiness. | 11 | ˘//···/˘/˘˘ |
| This world as some gay flowery field is spread, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Which hides a serpent in its painted bed, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And most it wounds when most it charms our eyes, | 10 | ········/· |
| At once the tempter and the paradise. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And would you, then, sweet peace of mind restore, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| And in fair calm expect your parting hour, | 11 | ····˘/·/˘/˘ |
| Leave the mad train, and court the happy few. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Well may it be replied, "O friend, you show | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| Others the path, from which so often you | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| Have stray'd, and now stray farther than before." | 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.