Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)

Translated by Charles Eliot Norton
From the “Vita Nuova”

THAT which opposes in my mind doth die

Whene’er, O beauteous Joy, I win thy sight:

And I hear Love when I to you am nigh,

Who saith, “Depart, if death doth thee affright.”

My face the colour of my heart displays,

Which, fainting, any chance support doth seek;

And, as I tremble in my drunken daze,

“Die! die!” the very stones appear to shriek.

Sin he commits who then may look on me,

If my alarmëd soul he doth not aid,

At least by showing that he feeleth grief

For that deep woe, which you deriding see,

And which is in thy dying look displayed,

Of eyes that long in death for their relief.