‘I dí miei piú leggier' che nesun cervo,'

These days of mine, faster than a hind,
fly like shadows, and I have seen no more good
than an eye-wink, and few are the calm hours,
whose bitterness and sweetness I keep in mind.
Wretched world, violent and changeable,
wholly blind is he who sets his hopes on you:
my heart was stolen away from you, and now is taken
by one who is already earth, and looses sinew from bone.
But the better form of her that lives, still,
and lives forever, in the high heavens,
makes me more in love now with all her beauties:
and I see, only in thought, as my hair whitens,
what she is today, and in what place she is,
and what it was to see her graceful veil.

Translated by: A. S. Kline