1. If you are vexed, my friends, with love's unease
Then ask the place which my lovesick one did see,

2. Or did you come at dawn to check on that fever,
Then greet in my name every hill and dune.

3. O friends, if ruins you happen to see
Then speak of my love for that old abode,

4. And weep for a home whose laughing walls
Bent boughs once caressed with a gentle lean.

5. Who can heal my love-wrecked heart, traitor she,
My tears that flow each time I say, "Enough!"

6. How much anguish I suffered with sweet consent,
How much passion my heart did embrace and accept.

7. How much blame my ears took though knowing not
What was said, but I could not make out the words.

8. So, may God protect the days when I gained
Loves so dear they were my most precious hope.

9. As if fate in its malice allowed them by chance
Thoughtless, not realizing it was being stingy.

10. For all fate did give you, how much it gave:
Gifts, favors, in love pouring forth generously.

11. Would that they had gauged the extent of my devotion
Or not made my heart exceed its appointed bounds,

12. Or had they but guarded a soul that craves their own,
Loved them, though they cared little for such affection.

13. You who blame me, do not go on. My heart is busy
With matters far from censure or rebuke.

14. Stop this blame, for the rule of love has passed
Judgment, doing all it desires in its own law.

15. You know well since I was burdened with their love
I have no power to alter love's arrangements.

16. O my fellow in professing passion, stop,
For you know not after me what may come to pass.

17. My lords, I am the youth, long suffering
The judgment of love, be it just or unfair.

18. Send your affection or, if you wish, do not,
For I will not, by God, move from loving you.

19. If I avert my eyes from you, they will turn back,
Looking to you, though you block my path.

20. How escape when you have burdened me with caring for you
And blocked my every way from you?

21. I am the lover. If you allow me to meet
My heart finds cure. Do not replace it with banishment.

22. By right of the sincerity of my love for you,
And the good life I have long shared with you.

23. Were my eyes aware of the anguish to come,
My tears would not have flowed freely for you before.

24. If you would let my soul love, though after you
I want, my lords, no substitute.