Love

Sonnet: A Rapture concerning his Lady

by Guido Cavalcanti c. 1255–1300

Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1861) · From The Early Italian Poets (1861)

Love

Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon,
Who makes the air all tremulous with light,
And at whose side is Love himself? that none
Dare speak, but each man's sighs are infinite.
Ah me! how she looks round from left to right,
Let Love discourse: I may not speak thereon.
Lady she seems of such high benison
As makes all others graceless in men's sight.
The honour which is hers cannot be said;
To whom are subject all things virtuous,
While all things beauteous own her deity.
Ne'er was the mind of man so nobly led
Nor yet was such redemption granted us
That we should ever know her perfectly.

MLA

Cavalcanti, Guido. “Sonnet: A Rapture concerning his Lady.” Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/cavalcanti/3/.

Chicago

Cavalcanti, Guido. “Sonnet: A Rapture concerning his Lady.” Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/cavalcanti/3/.

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