Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LA VITA NUOVA: SONNET. BEATRICE HAS GONE UP INTO HIGH HEAVEN, by DANTE ALIGHIERI


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LA VITA NUOVA: SONNET. BEATRICE HAS GONE UP INTO HIGH HEAVEN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Beatrice is gone up into high heaven
Last Line: Watches me; and will guerdon me, I trust.
Alternate Author Name(s): Dante; Alighieri, Dante


Beatrice is gone up into high Heaven,
The kingdom where the angels are at peace;
And lives with them: and to her friends is dead.
Not by the frost of winter was she driven
Away, like others; not by summer heats;
But through a perfect gentleness, instead.
For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead
Such an exceeding glory went up hence
That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire,
Until a sweet desire
Entered Him for that lovely excellence,
So that He bade her to Himself aspire;
Counting this weary and most evil place
Unworthy of a thing so full of grace.

Wonderfully out of the beautiful form
Soared her clear spirit, waxing glad the while;
And is in its first home, there where it is.
Who speaks thereof, and feels not the tears warm
Upon his face, must have become so vile
As to be dead to all sweet sympathies.
Out upon him! an abject wretch like this
May not imagine anything of her, --
He needs no bitter tears for his relief.
But sighing comes, and grief,
And the desire to find no comforter,
(Save only Death, who makes all sorrow brief)
To him who for a while turns in his thought
How she hath been among us, and is not.

With sighs my bosom always laboureth
In thinking, as I do continually,
Of her for whom my heart now breaks apace;
And very often when I think of death,
Such a great inward longing comes to me
That it will change the colour of my face;

* * * * *

I scare could tell indeed how I am thus.
All joy is with my bitter life at war;
Yea, I am fallen so far
That all men seem to say, 'Go out from us,'
Eyeing my cold white lips, how dead they are.
But she, though I be bowed unto the dust,
Watches me; and will guerdon me, I trust.





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