303. ‘Amor, che meco al buon tempo ti stavi’

Love who stayed with me when times were good

among these banks, friendly to our thoughts,

and to settle our old arguments

went talking with the river and with me:

flowers, leaves, turf, shade, cave, wave, gentle breeze,

closed valley, high hills and sunlit slopes,

a refuge from my lovers’ troubles,

from my overwhelming, heavy fate:

O wandering dwellers in the green wood,

O nymphs, and you whom the fresh weed-filled depths

of liquid crystal feed and grant a home:

my day was so clear, and now’s so dark,

like Death that made it so: in this world

each has his destiny from the day he’s born.