A MODERN PROSE TRANSLATION
Now that the heavens and the earth and the wind are silent, and sleep reins in the beasts and the birds, Night drives her starry car about, and in its bed the sea lies without a wave,
I am awake, I think, I burn, I weep; and she who destroys me is alway before me, to my sweet pain: war is my state, full of sorrow and suffering, and only thinking of her do I have any peace.
Thus from one clear living fountain alone spring the sweet and the bitter on which I feed; one hand alone heals me and pierces me.
And that my suffering may not reach an end, a thousand times a day I die and a thousand am born, so distant am I from health.