Why should I seek to ease intense desire
    With still more tears and windy words of grief,
    When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
    To souls whom love hath robed around with fire? 
Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
    When all must die?  Nay, death beyond belief
    Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
    Since in my sum of woes all joys expire! 
Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
    I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
    Gliding between her gladness and her woe? 
If only chains and bands can make me blest,
    No marvel if alone and bare I go
    An armed Knight’s captive and slave confessed.

XXXII.

LOVE’S EXPOSTULATION.

S’ un casto amor.

If love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill,
    If fortune bind both lovers in one bond,
    If either at the other’s grief despond,
    If both be governed by one life, one will;
If in two bodies one soul triumph still,
    Raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond,
    If Love with one blow and one golden wand
    Have power both smitten breasts to pierce and thrill;
If each the other love, himself forgoing,
    With such delight, such savour, and so well,
    That both to one sole end their wills combine;
If thousands of these thoughts, all thought outgoing,
    Fail the least part of their firm love to tell: 
    Say, can mere angry spite this knot untwine?

XXXIII.

FIRST READING.

A PRAYER TO NATURE.

AMOR REDIVIVUS.

Perche tuo gran bellezze.

That thy great beauty on our earth may be
    Shrined in a lady softer and more kind,
    I call on nature to collect and bind
    All those delights the slow years steal from thee,
And save them to restore the radiancy
    Of thy bright face in some fair form designed
    By heaven; and may Love ever bear in mind
    To mould her heart of grace and courtesy. 
I call on nature too to keep my sighs,
    My scattered tears to take and recombine,
    And give to him who loves that fair again: 
More happy he perchance shall move those eyes
    To mercy by the griefs wherewith I pine,
    Nor lose the kindness that from me is ta’en!

XXXIII.

SECOND READING.

A PRAYER TO NATURE.

AMOR REDIVIVUS.

Sol perche tue bellezze.

If only that thy beauties here may be
    Deathless through Time that rends the wreaths he twined,
    I trust that Nature will collect and bind
    All those delights the slow years steal from thee,
And keep them for a birth more happily
    Born under better auspices,