Gaspara Stampa

1523 - 1554 / Padua

By Now So Sick Of Waiting

By now so sick of waiting, I'm by now
so beaten by the pain (by now the burn
won't stop and he forgets so quickly how
I trust in his return and how I yearn),

that I cry out for her to give me rest,
she of the pallid face and reaper's knife
whose chilly touch defines the edge of life,
so hard the need that grows within my breast.

But she is deaf and gives me no relief
as if she spurned my being mad with grief,
and deafly he denies himself to me.

My eyes are always wet, and weeping fills
this villa and its shore with misery,
while he lives smugly up there in his hills.
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