25. ‘Amor piangeva, et io con lui tavolta’

Love wept, and sometimes I wept with him,

from whom my steps never strayed far,

gazing, since the effect was bitter and strange,

at your spirit, set loose from all Love’s bonds.

Now God has returned you to the true way,

I lift my hands with all my heart to heaven,

thankful to him who in his mercy listens

benignly to honest human prayers.

And if in returning to the loving path,

you found hills and ditches in your way

enough to almost make you turn back,

it was to show how thorny is the road,

and how mountainous and hard the climb,

if a man would find where true worth lies.