Guido Cavalcanti

YOU, who do breach mine eyes and touch the heart,

And start the mind from her brief reveries,

Might pluck my life and agony apart,

Saw you how love assaileth her with sighs,

And lays about him with so brute a might

That all my wounded senses turn to flight.

There's a new face upon the seigniory,

And new is the voice that maketh loud my grief.

Love, who hath drawn me down through devious ways,

Hath from your noble eyes so swiftly come!

'T is he hath hurled the dart, wherefrom my pain,

First shot's resultant! and in flanked amaze

See how my affrighted soul recoileth from

That sinister side wherein the heart lies slain.