Moral reflections (Sonnet XXI) - Vincenzo da Filicaja

Hebe once wild streams of false delight their source 

Betray'd, this feeble heart inundating; 

Turbid with eddies which vain passions bring; 

Sense their dark fount; my breast their barren course.

But now they swell not, nor with harmful force 

In the chang'd channels of this bosom spring; 

No more my soul, its freedom forfeiting. 

Is whelm'd in thoughts and deeds that wake remorse.

Now, though they shrink — in reason's earnest eye,

The deep recesses of my soul appear,

Wasted and marr'd by those ungovem'd streams:

Yet, by my Saviour's grace, perchance this dry

Ungrateful soil — if genuine faith be here —

May bear joy's fruits beneath that Saviour's beams.

---

Vincenzo da Filicaja (1642 - 1707) Italy

Translated by John Sheppard

Source: The Foreign Sacred Lyre: Metrical Versions of Religious Poetry from the German, French, and Italian, by John Sheppard, Jackson & Walford, 1857