Affliction
opens the eyes
All those of you
who’ve either heard or seen
What in the past
my lot has been,
What joys and
pains of love I have endured
’Gainst which I
never was inured,
When I was quite
another person than
What you now see –
this present man.
You who the life
and nature of my woe,
My plaintive verse
have read and know,
My sighing,
crying, singing, fear and pain,
Yes, you for whom
all this is plain,
Who are in love
and know her game too well
From early years
when in her spell,
Must marvel at the
strangeness of God’s ways,
That I’m
transformed so to your gaze,
So made anew, as
if I’d never been
A man who took
love as his queen,
So utterly have I
changed heart and mind
And, by God’s
grace, left love behind.
And I myself am
grieved and put to shame,
When I consider
how it came
To be that Amor duped me totally
And did deceive me
openly,
That to the world
I did exemplify
Love’s order
dramatised thereby.
I’d not believed I
ever could break free,
While on this
earth my life should be,
Of such a craving,
God thought otherwise,
Pronounced me
innocent of lies,
And that my errors
he would deign to mend,
Once I their harm
did comprehend.
Then, though
affliction’s flowering had been long,
Much helped by
hate of wicked tongue,
Two fruits it
finally did bear for me
Which oft since
then do comfort me:
The one remorse,
the other that at last
I understand my
murky past.
I now know well
all love and earthly joys
Are but as grass
that time destroys,
And what a person
fancies in his brain
Will subject him
to its cruel reign,
The greatest
penance thus ne’er comes on time,
Though now and
then brings joys sublime.
(1601)
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