351. ‘Dolci durezze, et placide repulse,’

Sweet harshness, and quiet rejection,

full of chaste love and sympathy:

gracious disdain, that (now I realise)

tempered my foolish and inflamed desire,

gentle speech, in which the height of courtesy

and the height of honesty shone together:

flower of virtue, fountain of beauty,

that uprooted all base thoughts from my heart:

a divine glance to make a man happy,

now fiercely reigning-in the eager mind

from what is rightly disapproved of,

now quick to comfort my frail life:

that lovely variety was the root

of my salvation, which else was far away.