If I have viewed another with delight,
never be delight in our mutual looks;
if with another I engaged in pleasant speech,
let your eternal displeasure point at me.
And if another love disturbs my sense,
chase out of me my soul, who've been my soul.
But as I die without resisting
my unhappy lot, my only wish
is you allow me choose the death I like.
Let my death be of my choice,
for your mere choice
continues me in life.
Let me not die of harshness, Fabio,
when I can die of love.
That will do you credit,
redeem me, since to die for love,
not for guilt, is no less a death,
but more an honoured one.
And now, finally, I seek your pardon
for all the wrongs I did to you through love.
Wrongs they are and they deserve your scorn.
Your offence is just in my accosting you,
because by loving you
I turn you to ingratitude.
"You Foolish Men"
You foolish men who lay
the guilt on women,
not seeing you're the cause
of the very thing you blame;
if you invite their disdain
with measureless desire
why wish they well behave
if you incite to ill.
You fight their stubbornness,
then, weightily,
you say it was their lightness
when it was your guile.
In all your crazy shows
you act just like a child
who plays the bogeyman
of which he's then afraid.
With foolish arrogance
you hope to find a Thais
in her you court, but a Lucretia
when you've possessed her.
What kind of mind is odder
than his who mists
a mirror and then complains
that it's not clear.
Their favour and disdain
you hold in equal state,
if they mistreat, you complain,
you mock if they treat you well.
No woman wins esteem of you:
the most modest is ungrateful
if she refuses to admit you;
yet if she does, she's loose.
You always are so foolish
your censure is unfair;
one you blame for cruelty
the other for being easy.
What must be her temper
who offends when she's
ungrateful and wearies
when compliant?
But with the anger and the grief
that your pleasure tells
good luck to her who doesn't love you
and you go on and complain.
Your lover's moans give wings
to women's liberty:
and having made them bad,
you want to find them good.
Who has embraced
the greater blame in passion?
She who, solicited, falls,
or he who, fallen, pleads?
Who is more to blame,
though either should do wrong?
She who sins for pay
or he who pays to sin?
Why be outraged at the guilt
that is of your own doing?
Have them as you make them
or make them what you will.
Leave off your wooing
and then, with greater cause,
you can blame the passion
of her who comes to court?
Patent is your arrogance
that fights with many weapons
since in promise and insistence
you join world, flesh and devil.
"Love Opened a Mortal Wound"
Love opened a mortal wound.
In agony, I worked the blade
to make it deeper. Please,
I begged, let death come quick.
Wild, distracted, sick,
I counted, counted
all the ways love hurt me.
One life, I thought—a thousand deaths.
Blow after blow, my heart
couldn't survive this beating.
Then—how can I explain it?
I came to my senses. I said,
Why do I suffer? What lover
ever had so much pleasure?
"Phyllis"
Phyllis, a brush's boldness
emboldens my feather-pen:
that brush's glorious failure
engenders hope, not fear.
Risking error in your cause
sufficed to spur me on.
When risk becomes so precious,
what value has mere success?
So do allow this quill
to risk another flight,
since, having offended once,
it otherwise has no leave.
.....
You, 0 exquisite Phyllis,
such a heavenly creature,
grace's gift to the world,
heaven's very perfection.
On your most hallowed altars
no Sheban gums are burnt,
no human blood is spilt,
no throat of beast is slit,
for even warring desires
within the human breast
are a sacrifice unclean,
a tie to things material,
and only when the soul
is afire with holiness
does sacrifice glow pure,
is adoration mute.
.....
I, my dearest Phyllis,
who revere you as divine,
who idolize your disdain,
and venerate your rigor;
I, like the hapless lover
who, blindly circling and circling,
on reaching the glowing core,
falls victim to the flame;
I, like the innocent child,
who, lured by the flashing steel,
rashly runs a finger
along the knife-blade's edge;
who, despite the cut he suffers,
is ignorant of the source
and protests giving it up
more than he minds the pain;
I, like adoring Clytie,
gaze fixed on golden Apollo,
who would teach him how to shine--
teach the father of brightness!
I, like air filling a vacuum,
like fire feeding on matter,
like rocks plummeting earthward,
like the will set on a goal-
in short, as all things in Nature,
moved by a will to endure,
are drawn together by love
in closely knit embrace ...
But, Phyllis, why go on?
For yourself alone I love you.
Considering your merits,
what more is there to say?
That you're a woman far away
is no hindrance to my love:
for the soul, as you well know,
distance and sex don't count.
.....
How could I fail to love you,
once I found you divine?
Can a cause fail to bring results,
capacity go unfulfilled?
Since you are the acme of beauty,
the height of all that's sublime--
that Time's green axle-tree
beholds in its endless turning--
can you wonder my love sought you out?
Why need I stress that I'm true,
when every one of your features
betokens my enslavement?
Turn your eyes toward yourself
and you'll find in yourself and in them
not only occasion for love
but compulsion to surrender.
Meanwhile my tender care
bears witness I only live
to gaze at you spellbound and sigh,
to prove that for you I die.
𝐒𝐎𝐑 𝐉𝐔𝐀𝐍𝐀 𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐀 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐙.
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