304. ‘Mentre che ‘l cor dagli amorosi vermi’

While my heart was being consumed

by loving worms, burned in loving fire,

I searched for traces of a wandering creature

through the solitary enclosing hills:

and was so ardent singing of the grief

of Love, of her who seemed so cruel:

but wit and verse came meagrely,

in those days, to my young and feeble mind.

That fire is dead, and a little marble hides it:

a fire that if it had increased with time

(as it has in others) as far as my old age,

armed with verses, where everything disarms me,

I would, with that mature style, have made stones

shatter with my speaking, and weep with sweetness.