[Poems by Wilde in] Richard Henry Wilde :: :: University of Virginia Library

He loves me not!—no! he has never loved me!
Yet men have called me fair, and women frown'd,
Curling their lip with well affected scorn,
Or subtler still, join'd in their gallants praise,
With earnest admiration sweetly pale,
Lauding my greatest faults. He loves me not,
And yet I am well-born—Donati's daughter
Has little need to envy rank in Florence,
Nor can the proudest Alighieri deem
Their Dante matched beneath his gentle blood.
I did not come unportioned to his bed,
Though that were nothing: gold he prizes not,
Ev'n his worst foes, in all their bitterest strife,
Have failed to soil his glory with that stain.

But what avails it all? He loves me not,
Altho' I am the mother of his children,
Have loved, and love, and must forever love him,
Spite of his coldness, and our houses' discord,
These civil broils—the poverty and exile
He will not let me share, and last and worst,
The cherished passion of his early youth,
That has survived them all, and even the grave!
Thrice happy Beatrice!—dying young—
Beloved of Dante—in his heart embalmed,
And by his prose and verse to after years,
Perhaps to other ages handed down!

192

Would I were with thee gentle Portinari!
Or thou wert here, and free to share his love,
Who neither can return nor conquer mine!
But let me perish first!—I could not bear
To witness all his tenderness for Thee.
And yet thy soul can ne'er have known for him
The passionate devotion felt by mine.

Had Dante loved me, think'st thou all the world
Would e'er have won or forced me from his arms?
No, never! never!—far too like his own,
In Nature's sternest mould my heart was cast;
O'er ruined hopes, with silent grief and rage,
In violent desperate calm—to brood and break,
May be its destiny—but not to change!

Yes! they may call me proud and harsh and stern,
And gossips hint 'twas Dante's shrewish wife
Taught him Philosophy—of such I reck not—
But none have known, and none will ever know
How deep a love abided in my bosom,
How keen the pang to find it unreturned.

Heaven knows, that often when to them I seemed
Sullen or froward all my soul was tasked,
Far, far beyond its strength, to hide my tears.
Their blame I could endure but not their pity
Nor even his—and therefore have I hid,
In my shut breast, it's self-consuming care,
Rather than loving, seem unloved, or scorned.

O! who can tell how my whole being shook
Convulsively as if the living clay,
Like the inanimate Earth, could quake and shudder,
As the Volcano bids with trembling agony;—
O! who can tell how more than lava flames
Burned in my brain when I was first aware
That Dante loved me not, and I was doomed
To share his bed, a stranger to his heart?
Tormenting doubts reluctantly admitted
Strange phantom shapes—dream horrid and obscure,
Suspicions—hideous shadows of the Truth
Haunted me long and rose almost to phrenzy
Till the bolt fell, and crushed me, to a calm!

193

Strange fits of absence, reverie and gloom
Hung o'er his spirit often from the first,
Nor had I power to chase the cloud away:
He loved not question in these moods of mind,
If sportively I chid him, he repelled
My fondness gravely—Levity displeased him,
Silence and sorrow tacitly reproved.
The lion and the eagle in his blood
Made him impatient of the least restraint
And even watchful tenderness annoyed him.
At times indeed, he half-rebuked himself,
And craved my pardon for his waywardness,
Pleaded his studies—and the state of Florence—
Forese's death—and Guido's banishment,
Or else my kinsman Corso's fiery temper
Pride and vindictiveness, and civil feuds.

But yet some words half uttered in his sleep—
A name too well pronounced—tho' in a sigh
Sufficed to tell these were not all his griefs.
He used to sit and watch Arnolfo's labors
As if St. Reparata's wondrous pile
Wrapt him in contemplation—but the vault
Where Beatrice's relics lay was there
And Portinari's palace full in view.

When our accursed factions in their war
With fierce, blind, cruel, undiscerning fury
Condemned my Alighieri in his absence,
And when our house to pillage & the flames
Was given, and I strove to save what he
With jealous care had ever held most precious
The treasures of his mind—the hallowed page
To which he poured out all his secret soul,
O! what a pang it was to find HER there
The load-star of his verse—his theme—his Muse!
Since then my life has been one long disease
On which Death only can bestow a cure.

My Gabriello! were it not for thee
And Jacopo, Pietro, and thy sister,
Called by her name—I knew not wherefore then,
I had not lingered in the world thus long
To pine in hopeless widowhood of heart,
And leave behind a blighted memory!