DANTE ALIGHIERI.
97
Last All Saints' holy-day, even now gone by,
I met a gathering of damozels:
She that came first, as one doth who excels.
Had Love with her, bearing her company:
A flame burned forward through her steadfast eye.
As when in living fire a spirit dwells:
So, gazing with the boldness which prevails
O'er doubt, I knew an angel visibly.
As she passed on, she bowed her mild approof
And salutation to all men of worth,
Lifting the soul to solemn thoughts aloof.
In Heaven itself that lady had her birth,
I think, and is with us for our behoof:
Blessed are they who meet her on the earth.
- ↑ This and the six following pieces (with the possible exception of the canzone at page 101) seem so certainly to have been written at the same time as the poetry of the Vita Nuova, that it becomes difficult to guess why they were omitted from that work. Other poems in Dante's Canzoniere refer in a more general manner to his love for Beatrice, but each among those I allude to bears the impress of some special occasion.
