Where'er thou comest ne'er thy mission balk,
But say, 'Speed thou me on, my charge is this,
To reach her feet whose praise my treasure is,'
Yet if thou wouldst delay, be still above
Such weakness as to rest with hearts that rove
In paths ignoble; let thy heart be shown
Solely to ladies sweet, and men who love,
Who, courteous, the quick path will speed thee on
To where she sits, and with her Love alway.
Ah then, my song, commend me as thou may."
A short time after this the father of Beatrice, Folco Portinari, of whom we have already heard, died. She herself had been married some time before to Simone dei Bardi (of the family which, the reader will be pleased to recollect, afterwards produced Romola, by grace of God and of George Eliot). It was the custom, Dante tells us, that in times of grief men and women mourned apart; and accordingly, Beatrice was attended in her affliction by "many ladies," the companions by whom she is always surrounded through the tale. It would seem that the poet himself kept lingering about the doors of the closed house, with a natural longing to be near her in her grief, and to hear of her, though incapable of giving her any consolation. "Where I sat," he says, "her friends passed continually in and out, and as they passed, I could hear them speak concerning her, how she wept." As two of these ladies came out talking of their friend, one said to the other, "She grieves so, that one is like to die of pity." At this the young man, half hidden by some friendly pillar, felt the tears rush to his eyes, and hastily covered his face with his hands that no one might see them; and he would have gone away, "to be alone," most likely to that chamber of tears which he had filled
