Literary Analysis of a Poem: Love’s Inconsistency

The poem “Love’s Inconsistency” by Francisco Petrarch is about the love of his life, a twenty-three-year-old married woman he called Laura. The lines throughout the poem describe the pain he feels such as “I fear and hope, I burn and freeze”. He is explaining the sorrow and loss he feels for loving someone that cannot return the same feelings. But he remarks at how he hopes to continue living because the joy of loving her is far more worth it than living without her. Petrarch is overwhelmed by all the different emotions he is feeling, when he is describing wanting to die but maintain his health, how he loves another but hates himself for it. He’s endorsing the pain and joy it is to be in love, how heartbreak can make someone want to die but then again, it gives him so much happiness to see her face and to just spend another moment with her. And when he ends his poem with “and my delight is causer of my grief” it relates to many other people’s situations when it comes to love and relationships. Many others have experienced the same feeling as Petrarch, knowing that someone does not love you back or even remaining in a relationship where all respect and trust is lost due to infidelity, and as much as one may be hurting, to the point where your heart hurts so much is unbearable. But then that same person inflicting that pain brings you so much joy, and due to that brief moment of happiness you remain with them because no one else has such great affect on you. The pain and joy he feels for this unreturned love is universal to everyone in the world, from decades ago to modern time.