This is the opening piece of the cycle of five continuo madrigals that Monteverdi placed at the end of the Fifth Book. As I argued in the preceding chapter, these madrigals, all but one of which are taken from Battista Guarini's Rime, are arranged to form a kind of narrative. Beginning with ‘Ahi, come a un vago sol’ we are introduced to the opening stages of an amorous infatuation – brought on by the glance of a woman's beautiful eyes – into which the poet allows himself to be drawn in spite of his better judgement. His ambivalent attitude is made clear in this poem, in which he laments that ‘it does no good to hide’ even if, because he has been in love before, he knows that he will be hurt again. In the next poem, ‘Troppo ben puòquesto tiranno Amore’, his ambivalence is the focus, as fear and temptation compete, but by the third madrigal, ‘Amor, se giusto sei’, it is clear that the lover has given in, and he begs Love to be just and make his beloved as receptive to him as he is to her. By the fourth poem – “‘T'amo, mia vita’”, la mia cara vita’ – he wallows in the sound of his beloved's words (‘I love you, my life’), and in the fifth – ‘E così poco a poco’ – he is consumed by the affair, ‘like a moth to the flame’, conscious that to try to put out the blaze merely makes it worse.