190. ‘Una candida cerva sopra l’erba’

A pure white hind appeared to me

with two gold horns, on green grass,

between two streams, in a laurel’s shade,

at sunrise, in the unripe season.

Her aspect was so sweet and proud

I left all my labour to follow her:

as a miser, in search of treasure,

makes his toil lose its bitterness in delight.

‘Touch me not,’ in diamonds and topaz,

was written round about her lovely neck:

‘it pleased my Lord to set me free.’

The sun had already mounted to mid-day,

my eyes were tired with gazing, but not sated,

when I fell into water, and she vanished.