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from Sonnets pour Hélène
Si c’est aimer, Madame, et de jour et
de nuict,
Resver, songer, penser le moyen de vous plaire,
Oublier toute chose, et ne vouloir rien faire
Qu’adorer et servir la beauté qui me nuit,
Si c’est aimer, de suivre un bonheur qui me fuit,
De me perdre moymesme et d’estre solitaire,
Souffrir beaucoup de mal, beaucoup craindre et me taire,
Pleurer, crier mercy, et m’en voir esconduit,
Si c’est aimer, de vivre en vous plus qu’en moymesme,
Cacher d’un front joyeux une langueur extresme,
Sentir au fond de l’àme un combat inegal,
Chaud, froid, comme la fievre amoureuse me traitte,
Honteux, parlant à vous, de confesser mon mal :
Si cela c’est aimer, furieux je vous aime,
Je vous aime, et sçay bien que mon mal est fatal,
Le coeur le dit assez, mai la langue est muette.
English rendition by D.B. Wyndham Lewis:
If to love, Madam, is to dream and long
and brood by day and night on means of pleasing you,
to be forgetful of all else, to wish to do nothing else
but adore and serve the beauty that wounds me,
If to love is to pursue a happiness which flies me,
to lose myself in loneliness, to suffer much pain,
to fear greatly and to hold my tongue,
to weep, to beg for pity, and to see myself sent away,
If to love is to live in you more than in myself,
to hide great weariness under a mask of joy,
to feel in the depths of my soul the odds against which I fight,
to be hot and cold as the fever of love takes me,
To be ashamed, when I speak to you, to confess my pain –
if that is to love, then I love you furiously,
I love you, knowing full well my pain is deadly.
The heart says so often enough; the tongue is silent.