Let all these come to aid my soul’s complaint,

For pain like mine demands new modes of song.

No echoes of that discord shall be heard

Where Father Tagus rolls, or on the banks

Of olive-bordered Betis; to the rocks

Or in deep caverns shall my plaint be told,

And by a lifeless tongue in living words;

Or in dark valleys or on lonely shores,

Where neither foot of man nor sunbeam falls;

Or in among the poison-breathing swarms

Of monsters nourished by the sluggish Nile.

For, though it be to solitudes remote

The hoarse vague echoes of my sorrows sound

Thy matchless cruelty, my dismal fate

Shall carry them to all the spacious world.

Disdain hath power to kill, and patience dies

Slain by suspicion, be it false or true;

And deadly is the force of jealousy;

Long absence makes of life a dreary void;

No hope of happiness can give repose

To him that ever fears to be forgot;

And death, inevitable, waits in hall.

But I, by some strange miracle, live on

A prey to absence, jealousy, disdain;

Racked by suspicion as by certainty;

Forgotten, left to feed my flame alone.

And while I suffer thus, there comes no ray

Of hope to gladden me athwart the gloom;

Nor do I look for it in my despair;

But rather clinging to a cureless woe,

All hope do I abjure for evermore.

Can there be hope where fear is? Were it well,

When far more certain are the grounds of fear?

Ought I to shut mine eyes to jealousy,

If through a thousand heart-wounds it appears?

Who would not give free access to distrust,

Seeing disdain unveiled, and—bitter change!—

All his suspicions turned to certainties,

And the fair truth transformed into a lie?

Oh, thou fierce tyrant of the realms of love,

Oh, Jealousy! put chains upon these hands,

And bind me with thy strongest cord, Disdain.

But, woe is me! triumphant over all,

My sufferings drown the memory of you.

And now I die, and since there is no hope

Of happiness for me in life or death,

Still to my fantasy I’ll fondly cling.

I’ll say that he is wise who loveth well,

And that the soul most free is that most bound

In thraldom to the ancient tyrant Love.