| Samuel Waddington, comp. The Sonnets of Europe. 1888. | | | | “Love is but one thing with the gentle heart” | | By Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) |
| | Translated by Charles Eliot Norton
From the “Vita Nuova”
LOVE is but one thing with the gentle heart, | |
| As in the saying of the sage we find. | |
| Thus one from other cannot be apart, | |
| More than the reason from the reasoning mind. | |
| When Nature amorous becomes, she makes | 5 |
| Love then her Lord, the heart his dwelling-place, | |
| Within which, sleeping, his repose he takes, | |
| Sometimes for brief, sometimes for longer space. | |
| Beauty doth then in modest dame appear | |
| Which pleaseth so the eyes, that in the heart | 10 |
| A longing for the pleasing thing hath birth; | |
| And now and then so long it lasteth there, | |
| It makes Love’s spirit wide awake to start; | |
| The like in lady doth a man of worth. | | | | |
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