Something has been troubling me, a care
so subtle, so fleeting, it appears,
that for all that I know of the feeling
I scarcely know how to feel it for me.
It is love, but a love
that, failing to be blind,
only has eyes to inflict
a far more vivid punishment.
For it is not the terminus a quo
that afflicts these eyes:
but their terminus being the Good,
so much pain in the distance lies.
If this feeling that I harbour
is not wrong - but what love is owed,
why do they chastise one
who pays on love's account?
Ah, such finezas, so rare, so subtle are
the caresses I have known.
For the love we hold for God
is one without a counterpart.
Neither can such a love,
ever meet with oblivion,
since contraries are not
to be conceived upon pure Good.
But too well do I recall
having loved in a time now past,
with a quality beyond madness,
surpassing the worst excess;
yet since this love was a bastard,
of oppositions wed,
swiftly was it undone,
by the flaws that it was cast with.
But now, ah me, so
purely is this new love enkindled,
that reason and virtue
are only further fires to feed it.
Anyone hearing this will ask,
why then do I suffer?
Here an anxious heart responds:
for this very cause, there is no other.
What human frailty is this,
when the most chaste and naked spirit
may not be embraced
except in mortal dress?
So great is the longing
we have to feel loved,
that however hopeless it becomes
we are helpless to resist.
Though it adds nothing to my love
that it be requited
and though I try to deny it --
O how I crave this.
If it is a crime, I avow it,
if a sin, now it is confessed,
but however desperate my attempts,
I cannot not bring myself to repent.
Who sees into my secret heart
will bear witness
that the thorns I now endure
are my own harvest.
And that I am the executioner
of my own desires, fallen
among my longings,
entombed in my own breast.
I die - who will believe this? - at the hands
of what I most adore,
and the motive of my death is
a love I cannot bear.
Thus, nourishing my life
on this sad bane,
the death on which I live
is the life I am dying for.
But courage, heart,
though exquisite be the torments
through whatever fortunes heaven sends,
this love I do not recant.