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            Often Petrarch refers to Laura as his laurel.  This alludes to the myth of the huntress Daphne, who was pursued by Apollo, whose intent was to rape and possess her.  When she cried out for help, her father, the river-god Peneus, changed her into a laurel.  Apollo claimed her as his tree, saying that her leaves would wreathe the brows of his victors, so that he and his laurel should be joined together whenever songs are sung and stories told.  (In other poems, Petrarch tells us he had hoped to attain the laurel wreath — in Christian symbolism, the victory of faith — rather than seizing this sordid version of the laurel.  According to the values of his faith, his lust for her “in his heart” is a very real form of rape.)
            Following the lines identifying himself with Actaeon, Petrarch adds, “Song, I did not become that cloud of gold / which once descended in a precious rain / so that the flames of Jove partially dwindled, / but I have surely been the fire kindled / by a fine glance [both Actaeon’s and Apollo’s], and been the bird to gain / the heights and lift her who my words extolled; nor will some novelty loosen the hold / of my first laurel, for its gentle shade / still clears my heart of pleasures that must fade.”
            In other words, he was not rescued from himself; he did not transcend.  Instead, he has been like Apollo, whose fire was kindled by his lustful gaze, and like Jove (Zeus) who’s rape of Leda elevated her to immortality and resulted in the birth of Helen, the epitome of beauty (Petrarch’s brainchild, poetry) (whose beauty when abducted, it should be noted, was the impetus of that epic massacre known as the Trojan War).  Nothing will release him from the power of Laura, his first laurel, whose righteous refusal of him still works redemptively to cleanse his heart of all temporal, worldly pleasures.
            In poem 190 the deer image becomes “a ghostly doe / who stood between two rivers; she displayed / two golden horns beneath a laurel’s shade / although the sun had just begun to show.”  This dream or vision of the doe could easily be interpreted as yet another description of the unattainable Laura.  But the image cuts through to more psychological complexity.  The deer in poem 23 is identified as Petrarch, who was splashed by Diana (Laura), changed, and chased by his own dogs (lust).  In poem 190, the doe is female, yet with male horns, and the “I” who splashes her is Petrarch (Diana).  The male/female roles have become reversed in this shadow version of the dynamic between them.  He equates his desire with “lust for lucre,” and admits he left his life and trade to pursue her image (beauty) like one mad for money (his ultra greed being ironic in that money generally comes from the life of trade he has left).  Yet she is as unattainable as the laurel tree of the Daphne tale.  He ends the poem by adding that “my eyes were weary but unsated as / I hit the water, and she flew from me.”  Now he, or more specifically his insatiable lust, is to blame for her flight from him.
            The reverse-image effect between these two poems is significant.  The central issue is guilt — or rather, the paradox of guilt.  Who is to blame for his obsession?  Laura?  Her beauty?  His lust?  The nature of desire?  Love?  God?  Who splashed whom?  Who is the hunter, who the hunted?  How could what is inherently good, and even sacred, be evil?  Is love at first sight, a kind of aesthetic appreciation of one aspect of God’s creation, evil?  Is love of beauty merely a form of lust?  Is obsession not a kind of faithfulness?
            Interestingly, Petrarch’s life seems to be caught on the cusp between the Greek version of tragedy, in which the protagonist, though not perfect, is “greater than ourselves” and despite being at the mercy of the gods, or Fate, nobly retains his dignity, and the Renaissance re-vision of tragedy, in which the protagonist is thoroughly human and responsible for his actions, which usually result from the greatest of all sins, hubris, pride; thus his punishment is poetically just.  In the end, Petrarch accepts his victimization and acknowledges his willing acquiescence.  Only then is his nemesis assumed to be the loving, forgiving God.
            Longing for Laura contains another important “turn,” or reversal, within the narrative itself, and by extension within Petrarch, which results in his recognition that from his “vented rage, the fruit is shame, / remorse and lucid knowledge that what thrills / us in the world is but a dream that’s brief.”
            This life is but a brief dream.  Its purpose?  “The ending lifts the life, the dusk the day,” and shows us for what we ultimately are — temporal, powerless, and in need of salvation.  In the final poem he beseeches God to save his frail, lost soul, humbly acknowledging that the only righteousness, and the only hope of salvation, is redemption by grace.  When he releases all hope for worldly satisfaction, even if it is the final gesture of his otherwise futile life, this final hope remains.