150. ‘Che fai alma? che pensi? avrem mai pace?’

‘What do you think, my soul? Will I ever have peace?

Will I ever know truce? Or will I have endless war?’

‘I don’t know what will arise for us: but I think

that seeing our ills will not please her eyes.’

‘What help is that, when with those eyes

she makes us ice in summer, fire in winter?’

‘It is not her, but the one who rules her.’

‘What matter, if she sees, and yet is silent?’

‘Sometimes her tongue is silent, and her heart

complains aloud, and with face dry-eyed and happy,

she weeps within where no gaze can see.’

‘For all that my mind is not at peace,

aching with grief that gathers there and stays,

an unhappy man’s no faith in wild hopes.