free-verse15 lines
Love's Paradoxes.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti SimoniSento d' un foco.
Far off with fire I feel a cold face lit,
That makes me burn, the while itself doth freeze:
Two fragile arms enchain me, which with ease,
Unmoved themselves, can move weights infinite.
A soul none knows but I, most exquisite,
That, deathless, deals me death, my spirit sees:
I meet with one who, free, my heart doth seize:
And who alone can cheer, hath tortured it.
How can it be that from one face like thine
My own should feel effects so contrary,
Since ill comes not from things devoid of ill?
That loveliness perchance doth make me pine,
Even as the sun, whose fiery beams we see,
Inflames the world, while he is temperate still.