“A gentle thought that of you holds discourse
    Cometh now frequently with me to dwell,
    And in so sweet a way of Love doth tell,
    My heart to yield unto him he doth force. 
  “‘Who, then, is this,’ the soul says to the heart,
    ’Who cometh to bring comfort to our mind? 
    And is his virtue of so potent kind,
    That other thoughts he maketh to depart?’
  “‘O saddened soul,’ the heart to her replies,
    ’This is a little spirit fresh from Love,
    Whose own desires he before me brings;
  “’His very life and all his power doth move
    Forth from the sweet compassionating eyes
    Of her so grieved by our sufferings.’”

“One day, about the ninth hour, there arose within me a strong imagination opposed to this adversary of reason.  For I seemed to see the glorified Beatrice in that crimson garment in which she had first appeared to my eyes, and she seemed to me young, of the same age as when I first saw her.  Then I began to think of her, and, calling to mind the past time in its order, my heart began to repent bitterly of the desire by which it had so vilely allowed itself for some days to be possessed, contrary to the constancy of reason.  And this so wicked desire being expelled, all my thoughts returned to their most gentle Beatrice, and I say that thenceforth I began to think of her with my heart possessed utterly by shame, so that it was often manifested by my sighs; for almost all of them, as they went forth, told what was discoursed of in my heart,—­the name of that gentlest one, and how she had gone from us....  And I wished that my wicked desire and vain temptation might be known to be at an end; and that the rhymed words which I had before written might induce no doubt, I proposed to make a sonnet in which I would include what I have now told.”

With this sonnet Dante ends the story in the “Vita Nuova” of the wandering of his eyes, and the short faithlessness of his heart; but it is retold with some additions in the “Convito” or “Banquet,” a work written many years afterward; and in this later version there are some details which serve to fill out and illustrate the earlier narrative.[L] The same tender and refined feeling which inspires the “Vita Nuova” gives its tone to all the passages in which the poet recalls his youthful days and the memory of Beatrice in this work of his sorrowful manhood.  In the midst of its serious and philosophic discourse this little story winds in and out its thread of personal recollection and of sweet romantic sentiment.  It affords new insight into the recesses of Dante’s heart, and exhibits the permanence of the gracious qualities of his youth.

[Footnote L:  The differences in the two accounts of this period of Dante’s experience, and the view of Beatrice presented in the Convito, suggest curious and interesting questions, the solution of which has been obscured by the dulness of commentators.  We must, however, leave the discussion of these points till some other opportunity.]