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Home  »  The Sonnets of Europe  »  Michelangelo (1475–1564)

Samuel Waddington, comp. The Sonnets of Europe. 1888.

The Transfiguration of Beauty

Michelangelo (1475–1564)

Translated by John Addington Symonds
(A Dialogue with Love)

NAY, prithee tell me, Love, when I behold

My lady, do mine eyes her beauty see

In truth, or dwells that loveliness in me

Which multiplies her grace a thousandfold?

Thou needs must know; for thou with her of old

Comest to stir my soul’s tranquillity;

Yet would I not seek one sigh less, or be

By loss of that loved flame, more simply cold.—

The beauty thou discernest, all is hers;

But grows in radiance as it soars on high,

Through mortal eyes unto the soul above:

’Tis there transfigured; for the soul confers

On what she holds, her own divinity:

And this transfigured beauty wins thy love.