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When I was happiest, clouds always dimmed my brightest days: surrounded, pressed in by many bitter suspicions, I lived with dubious hopes, well-founded fears, between pleasures and pains. Then the Gods were not as generous as now they are mean; so it is that my heart endures unqualified wretchedness for flawed joys, inadequate content. Under nature's savage laws, Love, most free with wounds, niggard of fruit, made whole days unhappy whose hours were so glad. Through sweet thresholds, through hidden lies into cruel realms--on the outside all had seemed safe-- I was led, naked amid treachery. |
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Notes: From B A1:67:36. See also R LXXI:196. First printed in 1538 edition of VC; MSs F1, CASI, COR (basis of Visconti's edition), RA, V1, Ve2. See Hamlet, III:1:13. Key |