A Daily Countdown to 700 Years with the “colpi d’Amor”
“Benedetto sia ‘l giorno, et ‘l mese, et l’anno, / et la stagione, e’l tempo, et l’ora, e ‘l punto…” — Rvf 61
“Blessed be the day, and the month, and the year, and the season, and the time, and the hour, and the moment…”(Kline).
Io avrò sempre in odio la fenestra
onde Amor m’aventò già mille strali,
perch’alquanti di lor non fur mortali:
ch’è bel morir, mentre la vita è dextra.
Ma ‘l sovrastar ne la pregion terrestra
cagion m’è, lasso, d’infiniti mali;
et piú mi duol che fien meco immortali,
poi che l’alma dal cor non si scapestra.
Misera, che devrebbe esser accorta
per lunga experïentia omai che ‘l tempo
non è chi ‘ndietro volga, o chi l’affreni.
Piú volte l’ò con ta’ parole scorta:
Vattene, trista, ché non va per tempo
chi dopo lassa i suoi dí piú sereni.
I always hate that window from which Love
has already shot a thousand arrows at me,
though not a single one of them was mortal:
it’s good for death to come while life’s still happy.
And surviving in this earthly prison
causes me, infinite pain, alas:
and more because my grief will be immortal,
since the soul’s not separated from the heart.
Wretch, it should realise by now,
through long experience, that time
can never be turned back, or be restrained.
I often guide it with such words as these:
‘Go, sad one, he does not go before his time
who leaves the happiest of his days behind.