45. ‘Il mio adversaria in cui veder solete’

Mirror, my enemy, in which you are allowed

to see your eyes that Love and Heaven honour,

enamours you of beauties not its own,

sweet and delightful in more than mortal ways.

Through its promptings, Lady, I have been

driven from my sweet resting-place:

wretched exile, though I could not rightly stay

where you alone can have existence.

But if I had been fixed there with firm rivets,

that mirror would not have made you proud

and harsh, pleasing to yourself, to my harm.

Surely you can remember Narcissus:

that course and this runs to the same end,

though the grass is not worthy of such a flower.

Note: For Narcissus see Ovid’s Metamorphoses, falling in love with his own reflection he was changed into the narcissus flower.

‘Narcissus at the Fountain’ - Cornelis van Dalen (II) (Dutch, 1648 – 1664), The Rijksmuseum