La Vita Nuova (The New Life) VI. He composes the serventese of the sixty ladies
by Alighieri Dante
I say that during the time that lady was the screen for so great a love, so great on my part, there came to me the will to want to record the name of that graceful one and accompany it with many names of women, and especially the name of the gentle lady. And I took the names of the sixty most beautiful ladies of the city, in which my lady had been placed by the highest Lord, and I composed a letter in the form of a serventese, a poem of praise, which I will not write down: and I would not have mentioned it if it were not to say that composing it, a marvellous thing occurred, that the name of my lady was not allowed to stand in any other place than that of ninth among the names of those ladies.
