Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream

...to the desiring shores, where the painful and ungrateful death of the swimming Leander A youth from Greek mythology who drowned while swimming across the Hellespont to visit his lover, Hero. was warmly sighed for. I, Poliphilo, lying upon my bed—that opportune friend of a weary body—with no one present in my familiar chamber except my dear wakeful companion Agrypnia original: "Agrypnia" (Greek for sleeplessness/wakefulness). Here personified as his only companion during the night.. After she had held various consoling conversations with me, and after I had revealed to her the cause and the origin of my deep sighs, she piteously tried to persuade me to temper such distress. And perceiving that the hour had come when I should finally sleep, she took her leave.

Thus, left alone with my high thoughts of love, consuming the long and tedious sleepless night—all disconsolate and sighing because of my sterile fortune and my adverse and hostile star—and weeping for my troublesome and unsuccessful love, I reconsidered point by point what an unequal thing love is. I wondered how one can aptly love someone who does not love in return, and with what protection the fluctuating soul, besieged by unusual and frequent attacks and surrounded by hostile battle, can resist while so unarmed—especially since this seditious battle is internal, and one is constantly ensnared by anxious, unstable, and new thoughts.

Having grieved bitterly for a long time over such a miserable state, my wandering spirits were finally exhausted from useless thinking and from feeding on a false and feigned pleasure. But, truly and without fail, this pleasure was not of a mortal object, but rather of the divine Polia, whose venerable Idea In the Platonic sense, an eternal and perfect form. remains deeply impressed within me, and is most intimately sculpted there as a living occupant.

And already the trembling and flickering stars were beginning to grow pale in their splendor, when my tongue fell silent. That desired enemy Referring to Cupid or the personification of Love., from whom this great and unceasing struggle proceeds, was impatiently troubling my wounded heart, calling out to it tirelessly for some profitable and effective remedy. This was nothing other than a cruel renewal of my torment, without any pause.

I meditated on the quality of wretched lovers: by what condition they choose to die sweetly to please others, while living badly to please themselves, feeding their sword-like desire with nothing but laborious and sighable imaginations. Therefore, like any man weary after long daily labors, I had barely settled my painful outward weeping and shut off the flow of dewy tears that had carved furrows of amorous languor into my cheeks, when I finally desired my natural and opportune rest.

Now my moist eyes were closed a little between my reddened eyelids. Lingering between a bitter life and a sweet death, that part of me The body/senses. was invaded and occupied and oppressed by a sweet sleep—the part which is not united with the mind nor shares in such high operations alongside the loving and ever-watchful spirits.

O thundering Jupiter! Shall I call this unusual vision happy, or marvelous, or terrifying? For there is not an atom in me that does not tremble and burn as I think of it. To me