170. ‘Più volte già dal bel sembiante humano’

Many times now, with my true thought,

I’ve dared to assail my enemy, quiet and humble

in her actions, her beauty seeming kind,

with my honest well-considered speech.

Then her eyes rendered my thought vain

since all my fortune, all my destiny,

my good, my bad, my death and life, had been

placed in her hands, by him who alone can do so.

So I could not even form true words

that anyone but me could understand:

Love had made me blaze and tremble so.

And I see clearly now that glowing charity

ties a man’s tongue, and daunts his spirit:

who utters while he burns is in slight fire.