On the day when the year was completed in which that lady became a citizen of eternal life, I was sitting in a place where, recalling her, I was designing an angel on certain little panels: and while I was drawing, I turned my gaze, and I saw near me men to whom honour was due. And they were watching what I was doing: and, from what they said later, they were standing there some time before I was aware of them.
When I saw them, I rose, and greeted them saying: ‘Another was with me in my mind, so I was dreaming’. When they had left I returned to my work, that of drawing angelic figures: and creating them there came to me the thought of writing verse, as an anniversary, and writing them to those who had come to see me: and I then wrote this sonetto, which begins: ‘Era venuta: There came’ which has two versions of the opening, and therefore I will divide it according to the first, and mention the alternative.
I say that according to the first version this sonetto has three parts: in the first I say that this lady was already in my memory: in the second I say how Love affected me as a result: in the third I speak of the effects of Love. The second begins with: ‘Amor, che: Love, that’: the third with: ‘Piangendo uscivan for: They went weeping from’
This part divides in two: in the one I say that all my sighs went out speaking: in the second I say that some spoke different words to the rest. The second begins with: ‘Ma quei: But those’.
The second version is divided in the same way, except that in the first part I say when my lady came into my memory, and I do not say this in the other version.
First version:
There came into my mind
the gentle lady who through her virtue
was placed by the highest Lord
in the Heaven of humility where Mary is.
Second version:
There came into my mind
the gentle lady whom Love weeps for,
at the moment when her virtue
drew you to gaze at what I made.
Amor, who felt her in his mind,
was woken in my ravaged heart,
and said to my sighs: ‘Go now’:
so that each departed sadly.
They went weeping from my chest
with a voice that often brings
woeful tears to my sad eyes.
But those that issued with the greatest pain,
came saying: ‘O noble intellect,
it was a year ago you leapt to Heaven.’
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