Aspasia, your image sometimes enters
my thoughts. Either it gleams
fugitively, in strangers’ faces,
in busy places: or the glorious
vision appears on empty plains
under the clear sky, silent stars,
like a sweet harmony echoed
in my almost amazed soul.
Adored so much, you gods, and once
so much my delight and torment! I never
scent the fragrance of a flowery bank,
or the perfume of blooms in a city street,
without seeing you as you were that day,
enclosed in your charming apartment,
that was full of fresh petals of spring,
dressed in the colours of dark violet,
your angelic form revealed to me,
curving from under gleaming
furs, and you surrounded
by secret voluptuousness: while you,
clever seductress, showered fervent
echoing kisses on the curved lips
of your children, often stretching out
your white neck, and clutching them,
they not knowing why, to your hidden,
desirable breast, with a gentle hand.
A new heaven and earth appeared,
to my mind, and an almost divine light.
So it was that your arm, with living force,
drove that arrow into my defended heart,
which, once fixed there, I carried, crying out,
till the sun returned twice in its circling.

      Lady, your beauty seemed to me
like a divine light in my mind. Beauty
and music have a similar effect:
often both reveal the high mystery
of unknown Elysium. Then the wounded
man must live desiring that child
of his own mind, that image of love,
containing so much of the Olympians
in itself: in all its looks, and dress, and speech,
equal to that lady the rapturous lover desires,
and thinks in his confusion that he loves.
Now indeed he serves and loves the idea,
and not the lady whose body he embraces.
He is angered at last to realise his error,
his mistaken objective, and often, wrongly,
blames his lady: feminine understanding
seldom reaches to that exalted image:
woman cannot conceive or even begin
to understand what her own beauty
can inspire in a generous lover. She holds
no similar concept in her slender brow,
and, in the vital flashes of her glances,
man is deceived, wrong to hope,
wrong to demand deep feelings, strange
and more than human, in one who in all
her nature is less than man. Since, just
as her limbs are softer and more tender,
so her mind is less capable and weaker.

      So, Aspasia, you were never able
to imagine what you inspired
for a time in my mind. You never knew
what immeasurable love, intense pain,
what unspeakable tremors and delirium
you stirred in me: and there will never be
a moment when you could understand.
In the same way, the musician cannot
conceive what he creates, with hand or voice,
in his listeners. That Aspasia, whom I loved,
is dead. Once the object of my whole life, she
is lost forever: except when she returns
from time to time, then vanishes,
a dear ghost. But you live on,
not merely beautiful, but lovelier
it seems to me than all others.
Only the fire born from you is quenched:
since I loved not you but that Goddess
who once had life, now burial, in my heart.
I adored her for so long: her heavenly beauty
pleased me so, that though I was clearly
aware from the first moment
of what you were, your arts and wiles,
when I saw her lovely eyes in yours,
I desired you while she lived,
not deceived, but driven, by my pleasure
in that sweet resemblance, to suffer
a long and bitter slavery for you.

      Boast of it now, as you may. Say you were
the only one of all your sex to whom I submitted
to bow my noble head, to whom I willingly
gave my indomitable heart. Say you were
the first and I hope the last, it’s true, to see
my brow bend in supplication, fearful
before you, trembling (I burn to repeat it
with shame and scorn), beside myself,
hanging slavishly on all your wishes,
every word, each action, paling at your
superb disdain, my face glowing at some
sign of kindness, changing my colour
and looks at every glance. The spell broke,
and my chains were shattered too, and fell
to the ground: and I was happy. And though
I’m filled with tedium, I’m content,
after such long slavery, such madness,
to embrace freedom and sense. And though
a life devoid of affection, and noble illusion,
is like a midwinter night empty of stars,
it’s my solace and my revenge for a fate
that’s hard enough for me, that idle
and immobile on the grass I can gaze
at sea and land and sky, and I can smile.