313. ‘Passato è ’l tempo omai, lasso, che tanto’

The time is past, alas, now, when I found

coolness in the very midst of fire:

she is past, for whom I wrote and wept,

but leaves me still with pen and weeping.

The face is past, so gracious and so holy,

but as she passed her sweet eyes pierced my heart:

the heart once mine, that followed her in passing

that she had wrapped in her lovely mantle.

She took it beneath the earth, into the sky

where she triumphs now, wreathed in the laurel,

that her pure chastity was worthy of.

If only I too could be with her, set free from this,

the mortal veil that holds me here by force, be

without a sigh, there, among spirits that are blessed!