The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :: :: University of Virginia Library

Love and the gentle heart are one same thing,
Even as the wise man in his ditty saith:
Each, of itself, would be such life in death
As rational soul bereft of reasoning.

326

'Tis Nature makes them when she loves: a king
Love is, whose palace where he sojourneth
Is called the Heart; there draws he quiet breath
At first, with brief or longer slumbering.
Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind
Will make the eyes desire, and through the heart
Send the desiring of the eyes again;
Where often it abides so long enshrin'd
That Love at length out of his sleep will start.
And women feel the same for worthy men.

Guido Guinicelli, in the canzone which begins, “Within the gentle heart Love shelters him.” (See page 432.)