poem complete in themselves, and may be cited in Rossetti's matchless version:
"I was a-thinking how life fails with us
Suddenly after such a little while;
When Love sobbed in my hearty which is his home.
Whereby my spirit waxed so dolorous
That in myself I said, with sick recoil:
' Yea, to my Lady too this Death must come. '
And therewithal such a bewilderment
Possessed me, that I shut mine eyes for peace;
And in my brain did cease
Order of thought, and every healthful thing.
Afterwards, wandering
Amid a swarm of doubts that came and went,
Some certain women's faces hurried by,
And shrieked to me, ' Thou too shall die, shall die! '
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 the Convito, or Banquet, in which Beatrice appears as an allegory of divine philosophy. The process of this mutation is not difficult to discover.
