By Nirina Mignon
Though by a good birth, being of reason:
Having a temperate scale, being neither ferine with choler,
Nor sick with the covet of maenads, which are owed dishonor,
Who sizzling with the pangs of passion upwell their composure taught;
I do so confess and count my senses as nought,
Being before my sweetness, who was plucked from Heaven’s brow,
Then into fallow fields interred as a sprout of cardamom:
The beginning of joy and the infall of my heart.
Under the trample of dreadful fate who wishes for us to part,
Shall I dwell on your curtesy as inherited dowers,
Having a delayed ensoulment ’til the acquaintance ours?
Lend me your counsel, being concordat to virtue cardinal.