Love holds me in his fist

Love holds me in his fist,

Spins me, turns me about,

Smells me and then sighs...

Ah me, what a troubled sign!

Am I really, perhaps, unfit to enter into his kingdom

And to stay there again to stroll about?

And yet if now I am so lowly,

Emaciated, misshapen, only good to weep,

It is through these sighs and the long torments

To which without refuge Love has compelled me...

But when I try for a little

To return to what I was...,

You will see by the hundreds the young girls

Falling around me!

Such is the custom of Love, truly dreadful,

That one may live dying,

And that one may die alive,

Already deprived of everything,

Even when there is still much to here to savor...

Because of which, if now I am so lowly,

Emaciated, misshapen, only good to weep... etc.