May Love seek out new arts, devise a plot
to kill me, and discover new disdain;
for robbing me of hope will be in vain,
since it can scarcely take what I've not got.

Behold the kind of hopes on which I stand!
And see how perilous my certainties!
For I fear neither change nor enmities,
ploughing the sea, lost far from any land.

And yet, although one cannot pay grief's toll
where hope is gone, still Love has hidden there
for me an ill, that kills and can't be seen;

how long ago did Love place in my soul
I don't know what, born I don't know where,
come I don't know how, nor why it aches so keen.