The lamp of his soul was a woman.

Early May, in Florence, on a bank of our sweet blue sea, and the people scattered abroad like little stars strewn across the sky on a summer night, lifting their songs in supplication to the Giver of warmth and blossom and clear heavens, dancing and living, pouring out the nectar of their souls and bodies as a tear of gratitude to Him who grants love and spring — the houses stand empty of their owners, in the meadows and squares a flood of humanity, and the boughs of the trees glance sidelong at another sort of embrace — even the old men make merry, for the love of beauty is wisdom, and the women retrieve their memories; the young girls gather in rows like strings of necklaces and dart at the young men sidelong glances brimming with allure, as if those needed any urging; and the little ones play their wild play, and all they behold is folly —

In early May, on the feast day of love and spring, of poetry and the body, Dante came to know her: a child not yet nine, he a child a few months her elder. He saw her crimson dress, and gazed at the crimson it enclosed. They played, and looked long at one another, and little did she know of the voices ringing in his heart before ever they reached his ear: Behold, a mighty god comes to rule over you; behold, the era of your bliss has begun... And he trembled — what bliss ever came unaccompanied by the pangs of misery? With the rose come thorns, and before the honey, stings.

Long years she was absent from him — and not absent from him a single night.

Nine years passed, and he saw her a young woman: what he

had known unripe in her had ripened, and she had budded into a dew-fresh flower, walking with two of her fair friends about her — friends who did not envy her a beauty that eclipsed their own, though envy would have been her due, so much as they congratulated themselves on the gift of her company.

And he recognized in her the

dreams of a hundred months, and his head spun like a drunk-ard's; and she turned toward him, and smiled with love. It was little you did, Beatrice — but he asks nothing more than this. Smile at him, for in your smile is solace, and in it a rebirth of joy.

And she returned to him that very night, on the arm of the Lord of Love, who bore in his left hand the lover's blazing heart — and fed it to her.

And all his nights became visions in which she appeared to him in every manner of garb, and all his days became sighs

and laments on which her name was stamped, and which issued forth — and brought him forth — as fragments and poems.

You were a balm to him, binding up his wounds — why then did you go and open them afresh?

He saw her one day — and how seldom he saw her — at a wed-ding feast, and he trembled, and the color drained from him; and her friends noticed his alteration and began to mock him. And she too began to mock him... Alas, alas — can sin be hoarded up in the pure?

She grants him nothing but a smile, and with that he is content — why then does she refuse him even this? Because he writes verses to others? By what right does she claim him all to herself — a taking without giving? If only she understood his state, she would see that he weaves another's name into his poetry out of love for her, to keep suspicions and gossip far from her; and there is not a nail-paring's room in his heart for any other creature on earth. She is all his life, his poetry, his dreams — even if she shows herself to him only rarely.

The day she died, a girl of twenty-five... had he not already died twice before his death? She appeared to him dead in a dream, and he lay ill for days; then she departed from exis-tence, and he lay ill for months in which he nearly followed her. But what difference is there, for him, between her life and her death? Love — did his love alter with her absence? Can distance possess it? But then — had there ever been union? How merciful You are, O God: You saw that the world of pains and sighs was not fit for this angel to dwell in, and so You raised her to the lofty world of ether.

No, Beatrice: you were more to him than you reckoned, and beyond what you sup-posed. You were an awakening of righteousness,

for no sooner had you turned away than sin prevailed over him, and he fell into love affairs springing from lust, affairs in which love could not know itself.