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

On the last words of what you write to me
I give you my opinion at the first,
To see the dead must prove corruption nursed
Within you, by your heart's own vanity.
The soul should bend the flesh to its decree:
Then rule it, friend, as fish by line amerced.
As to the smock, your lady's gift, the worst
Of words were not too bad for speech so free.
It is a thing unseemly to declare
The love of gracious dame or damozel,
And therewith for excuse to say, I dream'd.
Tell us no more of this, but think who seem'd
To call you: mother came to whip you well.
Love close, and of Love's joy you'll have your share

There exist no fewer than six answers by different poets, interpreting Dante da Maiano's dream. I have chosen Guido Orlandi's, much the most matter-of-fact of the six, because it is diverting to find the writer again in his antagonistic mood. Among the five remaining answers, in all of which the vision is treated as a very mysterious matter, one is attributed to Dante Alighieri, but seems so doubtful that I have not translated it. Indeed, it would do the greater Dante, if he really wrote it, little credit as a lucid interpreter of dreams; though it might have some interest, as giving him (when compared with the sonnet at page 388) a decided advantage over his lesser namesake in point of courtesy.