354. ‘Deh porgi mano a l’affannato ingegno,’

Love, give your help to my troubled mind,

and my labouring and feeble pen,

to speak of her who is made immortal,

a citizen of the heavenly kingdom:

grant me, my lord, with my speech to hit

the target in praising her, as it could not alone,

since there’s no virtue or beauty in the world

that she is not worthy of possessing.

He replies: ‘Whatever heaven and I can give,

and good counsel and honest converse,

was all in her, whom death deprived us of.

No form was equal to hers since the day Adam

first opened his eyes: and now let this be enough:

I say it weeping, and weeping you must write.’