21. ‘Mille fiate, o dolce mia guerrera,’

I have offered you my heart a thousand times

O my sweet warrior, only to make peace

with your lovely eyes: but it does not please you

with your noble mind, to stoop so low.

And if some other lady has hope of it,

she lives in powerless, deceiving hope:

and it can never be what it was to me,

since I too disdain what does not please you.

Now if I banish it, and it does not find in you

any aid in its unhappy exile, nor knows

how to be alone, nor to go where others call to it,

it might stray from its natural course:

which would be a grave crime for both of us,

and more for you, since it loves you more.