A Valentine's Poem

This is from a book I'm reading, Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism, by Mary B. Moore.  This is her translation of Gaspara Stampa's Rime 14.  I thought it was beautiful and very apt for this day.


As someone who stares at the stars in the sky
always distinguishes some new one,
not ever seen before among so many emerging
shining lights of the world, little holy flames;
so, staring at your high and beautiful gifts,
Signor, my eye notices some new one,
that offers the matter
whereby of them one may write and tell.
But, just as the mortal tongue, closed
in the human veil, cannot recount
all the eyes of the sky, although the eye may see,
so, I can look at your honors well,
but the greater part of them I hide and obscure,
because the tongue is not equal to the task.