178. ‘Amor mi sprona in un tempo et affrena’

Love spurs me on and reins me back as one,

calms and frightens me, burns and freezes,

receives, disdains, calls to me, and spurns me,

keeping me now in hope and now in pain,

leading my weary heart high and low:

so that wandering desire loses its way

displeased by its own greatest pleasure,

since the mind is full of such strange error.

A friendly thought points out the ford,

not through water poured out by the eyes,

but soon to be crossed, where hopes are realised:

then a stronger force opposes it,

I’m forced to take another way, and steeper,

consenting to its lingering path, and mine.