The title (which is taken from the first line) may describe a voyage full of sad feelings but could also describe poet’s feelings because the ship can represent Petrarch’s soul.

 The sonnet consists of 14 lines: an octave and a sestet.

In his poem Petrarch describes a ship voyaging in a tempested sea, during the winter night.

The ship is stirred by poet’s lord and enemy and the oars are controlled by his thoughts who challenge the terrible storm. The sail is tore by the wind full of hopes and desires. The rain as cry and the fog as disdain damage the shrouds. The stars are covered by the storm so the poet starts to despair he couldn’t reach the port. 

Petrarch describes the voyage of a ship in a tempested and dangerous sea, the metaphor of  life.

The ship is under the control of his passion and thoughts that bring the soul to destruction. He associates words of different semantic spheres (about the life and the voyage) to underline the metaphor life-voyage but also to bette express  his feelings.

With the metaphor of the ship the poet wants to describe his life, brought to destruction by his foul thoughts and by the feelings that governs his soul. The poet knows that his  feeling would bring him to destruction but he cannot help being moved by them. Indeed they outstrip reason. He will never reach inner peace.

The reader can also interpret the poem as a general even pessimistic view of a life full of dangers, fear and conflicting feelingsl feelings.