Love, whose wings take up my pen,
precious love, sweet love, exultant love,
that for which I no longer hope, nor am allowed to hope.
I traverse mountains and storms,
I pass through the heavens and the stars.
This is the realm of pleasure:
ah, that my happiness were not the beginning of scorn!
This, this is what grieves me,
that one should thus be made to fall again from Paradise.
                                                              
                                                     (trans., William Hawley)