Sonnet 118

I leave my sixteenth year of sighs
and head into my final one
although it seems I’ve just begun
exploring ways to agonize.

The bitter’s sweet, my losses wise,
and life a weight. I pray my run
of bad luck ends; I’d be undone
if Death did shut her lovely eyes.

Sadly, I stay, but long to go,
and long for longing that has passed,
and fail at partial resolutions.

New tears for old desires show
I am unchanged; I have held fast
despite a thousand revolutions.

(translated from the Italian of Petrarch)

—A. M. Juster

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Restoring Man at Notre Dame

Carl R. Trueman

It is fascinating to be an outsider on the inside of an institution going through times of…

Deliver Us from Evil

Kari Jenson Gold

In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…

Natural Law Needs Revelation

Peter J. Leithart

Natural law theory teaches that God embedded a teleological moral order in the world, such that things…