Plain Song - Pietro Aretino

I am a glutton for the thing called love,
A bigger glutton than the ones who sit
All day at table, as the full hours flit,
And hold they’re happier than the gods above.
They swill down wine, while I, my turtle-dove,
Choose milk and find I am content with it —
Turn on the spigot! let us draw a bit:
Yes, I’m a very glutton, dear, for love.
And what, in truth, is more divine than — Lust?
To Lust and Love we’ll raise a litany
And do a little genuflection, too;
Since when all’s said, we do but what we must,
Like any abbess in her priory,
For an abbess, dear, is just like me and you.

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Pietro Aretino (1492 - 1556) Italy
Translated by Samuel Putnam
Source: The Works of Aretino, Translated into English from the original Italian, with a critical and biographical essay by Samuel Putnam, Illustrations by The Marquis de Bayros in Two Volumes; Pascal Covici, 1926, Volume II. [Elfinspell.com]