Laura Is Ever Present To Him

If the birds are making lamentation, or the green banks are moved by a little wind of summer, or you can hear the waters making a stir by the shores that are green and flowery.

That’s where I do be stretched out thinking of love, writing my songs, and herself that Heaven shows me though hidden in the earth I set my eyes on, and hear the way that she feels my sighs and makes an answer to me.

“Alas,” I hear her say, “why are you using yourself up before the time is come, and pouring out a stream of tears so sad and doleful.

“You’d do right to be glad rather, for in dying I won days that have no ending, and when you saw me shutting up my eyes I was opening them on the light that is eternal.”

HE CEASES TO SPEAK OF HER GRACES AND HER VIRTUES WHICH ARE NO MORE

The eyes that I would be talking of so warmly, and the arms, and the hands, and the feet, and the face that are after calling me away from myself, and making me a lonesome man among all people.

The hair that was of shining gold, and brightness of the smile that was the like of an angel’s surely, and was making a paradise of the earth, are turned to a little dust that knows nothing at all.

And yet I myself am living; it is for this I am making a complaint to be left without the light I had such a great love for, in good fortune and bad, and this will be the end of my songs of love, for the vein where I had cleverness is dried up, and every thing I have is turned to complaint only.