QUOTE : XVIII TO HIS LADY Beloved beauty who inspires love from afar, your face concealed except when your celestial image stirs my heart in sleep, or in the fields 5 where light and nature’s laughter shine more lovely; was it maybe you who blessed the innocent age called golden, and do you now, blithe spirit, 10 soar among men? Or does the miser, fate, who hides you from us save you for the future? No hope of seeing you alive remains for me now, except when, naked and alone, 15 my soul will go down a new street to an unfamiliar home. Already, at the dawning of my dark, uncertain day, I imagined you a fellow traveler on this parched ground. But no thing on earth 20 compares with you; and if someone who had a face like yours resembled you in word and deed, still she would be less lovely. In spite of all the suffering that fate assigned to human life, 25 if there was anyone on earth who truly loved you as my thought portrays you, this life for him would be a joy. And I see clearly how your love would still inspire me to seek praise and virtue, 30 the way I used to in my early years. Though heaven gave no comfort for our suffering, still mortal life with you would be like what in heaven becomes divinity. In the valleys, where you hear 35 the weary farmer singing and I sit and mourn my youth’s illusions leaving me; and on the hills where I turn back and lament my lost desires, 40 my life’s lost hope, I think of you and start to shake. In this sad age and sickly atmosphere, I try to keep your noble look in mind; without the real thing, I enjoy the image. 45 Whether you are the one and only eternal idea that eternal wisdom disdains to see arrayed in sensible form, to know the pains of mournful life in transitory dress; 50 or if in the supernal spheres another earth from among unnumbered worlds receives you, and a near star lovelier than the Sun warms you and you breathe benigner ether, from here, where years are both ill-starred and brief, 55 accept this hymn from your unnoticed lover.