What must I do? What do you counsel, Love?
The time has truly come to die,
and I have lingered longer than I wish.
My lady is dead, and my heart with her:
and if I wish to follow,
I must interrupt this cruel life,
since I have no more hope
of seeing her here, and waiting galls me.
Now all my joy
has turned to weeping at her going,
all sweetness has been taken from my life.

Love, you feel how deep and bitter
is this loss, where I grieve with you:
and know the weight and pain of my ill,
or rather ours, because a reef
has shattered the vessel,
and in a moment our sun is darkened.
What ingenuity with words
could express my grievous state?
Ah, blind, thankless world,
you’ve good reason to weep with me,
since what was beautiful in you is lost with her.

Fallen is your glory, and you do not see it,
nor were you worthy, while she
lived here, to have known her,
nor even to have been touched by her sacred feet,
because so lovely a thing
had to adorn heaven with her presence.
But I, alas, who without her
cannot love mortal life or myself,
weep cruelly for her:
this is all I have of all my hopes,
and this alone is what still keeps me here.

Ah me, that lovely face is turned to dust,
that used to be the pledge to us,
down here, of heaven and its good:
her form, invisible in paradise,
freed from that veil,
that shadowed the flower of her years,
later to be worn once more,
and never more relinquished.
when we shall see her again
dear and lovely, more, by as much
as eternal beauty exceeds mortal.

She returns, more lovely and more graceful
a lady, within me, where
she feels the sight of herself is more exalted.
This is one pillar of my life,
the other her bright name
that sounds so sweetly in my heart.
But recalling in my mind
that my hope is truly dead, living
while she flowered,
Love knows what I become, and she (I hope)
can see it now who is so near to Truth.

Ladies, you who have seen her beauty
and the angelic life
that heavenly one lived on earth,
show me your grief, and be overcome
by pity, not for here who leapt
into such peace, but for me left in this war:
so that if the way
to follow her is barred to me for long
only Love, speaking with me,
stops me from severing the knot.
For he reasons like this inside me:

‘Rein in the great grief that transports you,
lest your over-riding desire
loses you heaven, to which your heart aspires,
where she lives who seems dead to others,
and smiles to herself at her
own lovely leavings, and only sighs for you:
and prays that her fame, that breathes
still in many places, through your words,
is not extinguished,
rather that, if her eyes were ever dear
and sweet to you, your voice illuminate her name.’

Flee the fresh and blithe,
don’t go near laughter or song,
my song, but weep:
don’t take your place among happy people,
widow, disconsolate, in your black dress.