176. ‘Per mezz’i boschi inhospiti et selvaggi’

where men at arms go at great risk,

I go safely, since nothing can frighten me

except that sun whose rays are alive with love:

and I go singing (oh, my unwise thoughts!)

of her whom heaven cannot set distant from me,

whom I have in my vision, and seem to see

women and girls with her, and they are beech and fir.

I seem to hear her, hearing the branches and breeze,

and the leaves, and the birds lamenting, and the water

murmuring, running through the green grass.

Rarely did silence, and solitary awesomeness

of shadowy woodland ever please me so:

if only too much of my sunlight were not lost.

Notes