La Vita Nuova (The New Life) XL. His poem addressing the pilgrims travelling to Rome
by Alighieri Dante
After this tribulation it happened, at the time when many people go to see that blessed image which Jesus Christ left us as an imprint of his most beautiful countenance, which my lady gloriously sees, that some pilgrims were passing by on a road which runs almost through the centre of the city where that most gentle lady was born, and lived, and died.
These pilgrims, it seemed to me, went along very pensively: so, thinking about them, I said to myself: ‘It seems to me these pilgrims are from a distant place, and I do not think they have even heard of my lady, and know nothing about her: indeed their thoughts are of other things than those here, so that they perhaps think of distant friends, of whom we know nothing.’
Then I said to myself: ‘I know that if they come from a nearby place, they would be somewhat distressed passing through the centre of this grieving city.’ Then I said to myself: ‘If I could detain them a little, I would make them weep before they left this city, since I would speak words that would make everyone weep who heard them.’
So, as they passed from sight, I decided to compose a sonetto, in which I would make plain what I said within myself: and so it would appear more piteous, I decided to write it as if I had spoken to them: and I wrote this sonetto which begins: ‘Deh peregrini che pensosi andante: O pilgrims who go thinking’. And I said ‘peregrini’ in the general sense of the word: since ‘pilgrims’ can be understood in two senses, in one case generalised, and in the other specific: in general to the extent that whoever travels from their country is a pilgrim: in particular in that no one is a pilgrim unless they go to or from the shrine of Saint James.
And it should be known that correctly there are three titles for the people who go in the service of the Almighty: they are called palmers if they go overseas, since they often bring back palm leaves: they are called pilgrims if they go to the shrine of Saint James in Galicia, since the sepulchre of Saint James was further away from his country than any other apostle: they are called romeos if they go to Rome, which is where those I call pilgrims were going.
I have not divided this sonetto, since it is clear enough from my account.
O pilgrims who go thinking,
perhaps of things not present,
do you come from so far a place,
as your faces demonstrate,
that you do not weep when you pass
through the centre of the grieving city,
like those people who do not know
any part of its heavy sorrow?
If you will stay to hear my wish,
surely my heart of sighs tells me
that you will then travel weeping.
It has lost its blessed Beatrice:
and the words a man can say of her
have the power to make others weep.
