33. ‘Già fiammeggiava l’amorosa stella’

Already Venus, the star of love, was blazing

in the east, and that other northern constellation

Callisto’s Great Bear, that makes Juno jealous,

was wheeling round its bright and lovely rays:

the little old woman had risen to her spinning,

barefoot, dishevelled, and had raked the coals,

and that time had arrived for lovers

that calls them by custom to weep again:

when my hope that was already fading

entered my heart, that sleep kept closed

and grief moistened, but not by her usual way:

alas, how altered from how she used to be!

And she seemed to say: ‘Why do you lose courage?

The sight of these eyes is not yet taken from you.’