296. ‘I’ mi soglio accusare, et or mi scuso,’

I used to accuse myself, and now I excuse:

more, I esteem myself: hold myself dearer,

because of the true prison, and the sweet bitter

blow that I kept concealed so many years.

Envious Fates, you shattered the spindle

suddenly, that wound a clear and gentle

thread around my bonds, and that rare gold arrow,

so that death itself pleases beyond belief!

There’s no man who was ever so in love

with happiness, with liberty, with kindly life,

that he would not have altered his natural ways,

and chosen rather to be in grief for ever

than sing another, and from that wound

die happy, and live in so sweet a knot.