Explore "He Cannot Live Without Seeing her, but Would not Die that he May Still Love her (Ben MI Credea Passar Mio Tempo Omai)" on Textopian.
As pass'd the years which I have left behind, / To pass my future years I fondly thought, / Amid old studies, with desires the same; / But, from my lady since I fail to find / The accustom'd aid, the work himself has wrought / Let Love regard my tempter who became; / Yet scarce I feel the shame / That, at my age, he makes me thus a thief / Of that bewitching light / For which my life is steep'd in cureless grief; / In youth I better might / Have ta'en the part which now I needs must take, / For less dishonour boyish errors make.
Those sweet eyes whence alone my life had health / Were ever of their high and heavenly charms / So kind to me when first my thrall begun, / That, as a man whom not his proper wealth, / But some extern yet secret succour arms, / I lived, with them at ease, offending none: / Me now their glances shun / As one injurious and importunate, / Who, poor and hungry, did / Myself the very act, in better state / Which I, in others, chid.