Love is the genre and theme for poem 3. This poem describes how Petrarca felt when he fell in love with Larua and how it made him weak. He expresses himself and his ideas through metaphors and descriptive language. He displays a sorrowful tone throughout the poem.
In the first stanza, Petrarca starts with a metaphor. He states that “It was the day the sun’s ray had turned pale with pity for the suffering of his Maker”. This establishes a gloomy tone from the start of the poem. A sunray is something that is bright and is seen as something that is happy and cheerful. It turning pale suggest an unhappy feel. He then goes on is the next few lines to explain how he fell in love. He said things like “I was caught” and “I put up no fight”. This describes how Petrarca’s love for Laura engulfed him and he gave in. He uses the metaphor “your lovely eyes had bound me” in the last line to emphasize how captured he was.
In the second stanza, Petrarca explains how being in love turned out to be a bad thing. He portrays love as something to be fought against by saying “it seemed no time to be on guard against Love’s blows…”.The phrases “guard” and “against” show that Petrarca believed he needed to defend himself against love. He then goes on to say that his “misfortunes began in midst of the universal woe”. This shows how he felt like being in love negatively affected his life. The use of the word “misfortune” adds to the dark nature of this poem.
In the following stanza, Petrarca explains how love weakened him. He implies that love left him vulnerable by saying that “Love found me all disarmed”. The term “disarmed” usually refers to when someone removes a weapon from another person. In this poem, Petrarca’s weapon is his invulnerability which was taken by his love for Laura. In the next line, he states that love found a way to reach his heart through “the eyes which have become the halls and doors of tears”. This line implies that love found its way into his heart through the precise thing that is now showing his agony. Laura’s beauty is a part of the reason Petrarca loves her so much. Beauty is seen through the eyes that he now cries out of.
In the last stanza, Petrarca begins to refer to love as “him” or “his” representing it as a person. He uses this stanza to show his understanding as to why love hurts him so much. He starts off by saying that “it seems to me it did him little honor to wound me with his arrows…”. This expresses that Petrarca does not understand why love hurts him. He then goes on to say “and to you, armed, not show his bow at all.”. In this line, Petrarca is referring to Laura. Based on how good it feels to be in love with Laura, he would not suspect that it would hurt him in the end. This poem was written to demonstrate how love captured Petrarca and led to what he perceives as misfortune.
