First, the villain and heartless vagabond sought to win my good-will and
purchase my compliance, so as to get me, like a treacherous warder, to
deliver up to him the keys of the fortress I had in charge. In a word, he
gained an influence over my mind, and overcame my resolutions with I know
not what trinkets and jewels he gave me; but it was some verses I heard
him singing one night from a grating that opened on the street where he
lived, that, more than anything else, made me give way and led to my
fall; and if I remember rightly they ran thus:

From that sweet enemy of mine
My bleeding heart hath had its wound;
And to increase the pain I'm bound
To suffer and to make no sign.

The lines seemed pearls to me and his voice sweet as syrup; and
afterwards, I may say ever since then, looking at the misfortune into
which I have fallen, I have thought that poets, as Plato advised, ought
to be banished from all well-ordered States; at least the amatory ones,
for they write verses, not like those of 'The Marquis of Mantua,' that
delight and draw tears from the women and children, but sharp-pointed
conceits that pierce the heart like soft thorns, and like the lightning
strike it, leaving the raiment uninjured. Another time he sang:

Come Death, so subtly veiled that I
Thy coming know not, how or when,
Lest it should give me life again
To find how sweet it is to die.

--and other verses and burdens of the same sort, such as enchant when
sung and fascinate when written. And then, when they condescend to