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Question:

Could anyone analyze Petrarch's sonnet 36? I'm not sure what he means especially in the last 6 lines?

If I believed that death would free my chest
Of the amorous thought that crushes me,
With my own hands I should have laid to rest
These tiresome limbs and calmed this misery;

But since I fear that it would be a change
From war to war, from woe to other woe,
On this side of the pass that marks my range
I half remain, alas, and half I go.

It is now time that the merciless string
Should press and push the arrow that remained
With other people's blood all wet and stained

And I pray Love for this, and that deaf thing
Who left me with his colours splashed and dyed,
And does not care to call me to his side.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

I. If I thought that dying would cure my problems, I would have killed myself already.

II. But I don't know whether things are as bad after death. So I keep thinking about it.

III. It's high time that I should die as so many have died before me.

IV. (O Laura!) Death, who has come to so many others whom I knew ignores me.