Alas! when I behold this empty show
Of life, and think how soon it shall have fled;
When I consider how the honoured head
Is daily struck by death’s mysterious blow,—
My heart is wasted like the melting snow,
And hope, that comforter, is nearly dead;
Seeing these wings have been so long outspread,
And yet so sluggish is my flight and low.
But if I therefore should complain and weep,—
If chide with love, or fortune, or the fair,—
No cause I have; myself must bear it all,
Who, like a man ’mid trifles lulled to sleep,
With death beside me, feed on empty air,
Nor think how soon this mouldering garb must fall.
Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458–1530) Italy
Translated by James Glassford
Source: The Sonnets of Europe, ed. by Samuel Waddington. London: Walter Scott, 1888
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