This highly operatic song has a mysterious tone that can be almost disturbing in the hands of the right performers. In some ways, the sudden changes of mood and expression can be as much or more evocative of madness than some of his famous operatic mad scenes (as well as an ominous reminded that Donizetti himself died insane.)

The song opens with hurried, forboding chords and discords and an exclamatory "Dio!" (God!) from the singer. The piano and voice then take up a melody, one which is relatively calm after the unsettling vocal and instrumental introductory passages, though still passionate. The second verse begins in the same relatively balanced melody, but at the first repetition of the last lines, the mood becomes highly agitated again, and those disquieting piano chords from the introduction reappear, while the vocal lines, too, become more exclamatory and perturbed. The first verse then repeats, but while still using the original melody, the accompaniment is far darker in tone, and the vocal repeats and even flourishes and ornamentations, too, make it seem far more disturbed.

The text, whose author is unknown, translates as "God! Who with a gesture moderates the anger of the shaking sea, God! who with a gesture gives constancy and hope to men, extend your beneficent hand over my long sorrow. I do not ask of you the tender joy of a happy heart, not the hopes of an enchanting sorrow, I ask only the tear that will melt the ice in my heart."

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