Lyric Poem · Love
Sonnet
FROM THE ITALIAN OF CAVALCANTI.
GUIDO CAVALCANTI TO DANTE ALIGHIERI:
Returning from its daily quest, my Spirit
Changed thoughts and vile in thee doth weep to find:
It grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind
Those ample virtues which it did inherit
Has lost. Once thou didst loathe the multitude
Of blind and madding men — I then loved thee —
I loved thy lofty songs and that sweet mood
When thou wert faithful to thyself and me
I dare not now through thy degraded state
Own the delight thy strains inspire — in vain
I seek what once thou wert — we cannot meet
And we were wont. Again and yet again
Ponder my words: so the false Spirit shall fly
And leave to thee thy true integrity.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Sonnet” by Percy Bysshe Shelley — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet
Quick facts
- Poem
- Sonnet
- Poet
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Length
- 16 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Love, Sad
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 16 lines · 3 stanzas of 1–14 lines
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822
- Source record
- PoetryDBSonnet by percy-bysshe-shelley, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 6bfe0d66d02f63c1…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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