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Then saw I many broken, hinted sights In the uncertain state I stepped into. Meseemed to be I know not in what place, Where ladies through the streets, like mournful lights, Ran with loose hair, and eyes that frightened you By their own terror, and a pale amaze: The while, little by little, as I thought, The sun ceased, and the stars began to gather, And each wept at the other; And birds dropped in mid flight out of the sky, And earth shook suddenly, And I was 'ware of one, hoarse and tired out, Who asked of me, 'Hast thou not heard it said? Thy lady, she that was so fair, is dead’.

Although the Vita Nuova is essentially true history, the same cannot be said of a later work preferred to it by the author himself, albeit posterity has reversed his judgment. This is theConvito, orBanquet, in which Beatrice appears as an allegory of divine philosophy. The process of this mutation is not difficult to discover. Not long after her death, Dante, as he tells us at the end of theVita Nuova, had resolved, under the influence of a wondrous vision, “di dire di lei quello che mai non fu detto d’alcuna.” The mortal maiden thus necessarily becomes a type of supernatural glory and perfection, as we see her in theDivina Commedia, and the metamorphosis inevitably extends to the lyrics in which Dante celebrates her. She is no longer Beatrice de’ Portinari, but Philosophy, and unfortunately in too many instances Dante’s poetry has become philosophy also. The nobility of the form still assures it pre-eminence over all contemporary verse but the author’s own; but the substance is often mere reasoning in rhyme. Two canzoni, however, are of distinguished beauty, “Voi ch’ intendendo il terzo ciel movete” (translated by Shelley), and “Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute,” which Coleridge says, in 1819, he is at length beginning to understand after reading it over twelve times annually for the last fourteen years. “Such a fascination had it in spite of its obscurity!”