211. ‘Voglia mi sprona, Amor mi guida et scorge,’

Desire drives me: Love sees and guides me,

Pleasure draws me: Habit carries me on,

Hope beguiles me, and he comforts me,

and holds his hand out to my weary heart:

and the wretch takes it, and does not see

how blind and disloyal is our guide:

the senses reign, and reason is dead:

from one errant desire another rises.

Virtue, Honour, Beauty, her gentle ways,

and sweet words brought me among the branches

where the heart’s so gently caught.

Thirteen twenty-seven, at the beginning

of the first hour, on the sixth day of April,

I entered the labyrinth, and see no escape.