My thoughts turn to the day when I felt love
war in me, for the first time, and I said:
‘Ah, if this is love, how it torments me!’
When, with eyes fixed wholly on the ground,
I marvelled at her, she who was first to open,
all innocent, the passage to my heart.
Ah, Love, how badly you’ve treated me!
Why does such sweet affection bring
so much desire, and so much grief?
And why did such delight enter my heart
not serenely, not entire and pure,
but filled with agony and trouble?
Tell me, gentle heart, what fear
what anguish entered with that thought,
compared with which all pleasures were annoyance?
Fulfilling thought that offered up yourself,
in the day and night, when all things seem
to be at peace in this hemisphere,
you troubled me, unquiet, happy,
wretched, lying beneath the covers,
throbbing strongly at every moment.
And whenever, sad, afflicted, weary,
I closed my eyes in sleep: sleep vanished
consumed by fever and delirium.
Oh how the sweet vision rose, living,
among the shadows, my closed eyes
gazing at it beneath my eyelids!
Oh, how that sweetest of motions spread
through my bones, oh, how a thousand
confused thoughts rolled through
my trembling soul! As a breeze, flows
through the heights of an ancient forest,
and creates a long, uncertain murmuring.
And oh, my heart, while I was silent, while
I failed to struggle, what did you say, as she departed,
she the source of pain and throbbing?
I’d no sooner felt the burning
of that blaze of love, than the little breeze
that fanned the flame, flew on its way.
I lay there sleepless in the dawn,
and heard those horses, that would leave me lost,
stamping their hooves outside my ancestral home.
And I, secret, timid, and unsure, turned
my eager hearing, eyes open in vain,
towards the balcony in the darkness,
to hear the last words, that might fall
from her lips: to hear that voice:
alas, since heaven took all else away.
The servants’ voices often struck
my doubting ear, and a chill took me,
and my heart beat more fiercely!
And when that dear voice finally sank
into my heart, mixed with the sounds
of carriage wheels and horses:
I was left deserted, huddled trembling
on my bed, and, eyes closed, pressed
my hand to my heart and sighed.
Later, stupefied, dragging my
shaking limbs round the silent room,
I said: ‘What else could ever move my heart?’
Then the bitterest memory
rooted in my mind, and closed my heart
to all other voices, every other form.
And a deep grief searched my breast,
as when the heavens rain widely,
washing the fields with melancholy.
Nor did I, a boy of eighteen summers
recognise you, Love, when you first tried
your power on one born to weep.
When I scorned every joy, and the stars’
smiles did not please, not dawn’s
calm silence, not green fields.
Even the love of glory was silent
in my heart that it used to warm,
where once love of beauty lived.
My eyes would not return to my studies,
and that which I thought had made
all other desires vain, seemed vain itself.
Ah how could I have altered so, in myself,
how had one love taken all others from me?
Ah, in truth, how changeable we are!
Only my heart pleased, and that
perpetual dialogue buried in my heart,
keeping a guard on grief.
And my eyes that searched the earth or myself,
and allowed no fugitive or wandering glance
to light on any face, vile or lovely:
fearing to disturb the bright, virgin
image that I held in my heart, as waves
in a lake may be stirred by the breeze.
And that regret, for not having fully
delighted in fleeting days,
that weighs on the spirit,
changing to poison past delight,
stung my heart wholly: while shame
with its harsh bite still had no power.
I swear to heaven, to you, great spirits,
that there was no low desire in my heart:
it burned with pure, unblemished fire.
That fire still lives, affection lives,
the lovely image breathes in my thought,
from which I draw no delight that is not
heavenly, and that, alone, satisfies me.
