You that thus wear a modest countenance Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1861
abbaabbacdecde iambic pentameter sonnet
<artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>This sonnet forms a pair with the next, <xref doc="a.18d-1861.raw"> <title level="wrk">“Canst thou indeed be he that still would sing” . As Dante's prose commentary indicates, they illustrate the poetic style Dante announced in “Ladies that have intelligence in love” and the prose accompanying that canzone. The sonnets are struck in that “second person” style that supplies so much discretion to Dante's poetry, and that translates into DGR's own special kind of poetic impersonality.

Reading these sonnets after the preceding “My lady carries love within her eyes” one realizes why Shelley (in his “Defence of Poetry”) referred to the corpus of poetry as a sisterhood of ladies. “O women, help to praise her in somewise”: that line in the previous sonnet calls at some level to poetry and poems as if they possessed an existence independent of their nominal author. The ladies that have intelligence in love are figured in and as Dante's poems, which mirror those ladies.

DGR's source text was “Voi che portate la sembianza umile” in the third volume of Fraticelli's <hi rend="i">Opere Minori di Dante Alighieri</hi> .

Textual History: Composition

This is an early translation, in the 1840s, perhaps as early as 1846.

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

The translation was first published in 1861 in <hi rend="i">The Early Italian Poets</hi> ; it was reprinted in 1874 in <hi rend="i">Dante and his Circle</hi> .

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

“Introduction to Part II” (in Early Italian Poets) 189-193 Foster and Boyd, <xref doc="a.pq4309.a1.1967.rad" link="dead" from="66" to="67"> <hi rend="i">Dante's Lyric Poetry</hi> </xref> , I.66-67 (II. 109-110) . De Robertis, ed., Vita Nuova, 148-149 .

Early Italian Poets text Early Italian Poets text The Early Italian Poets From Ciullo D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300), the Fitzwilliam Proof Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1861 0 The Early Italian Poets From Ciullo D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300), the Alderman annotated copy Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1861 0 The Early Italian Poets From Ciullo D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300), Presentation Copy to Frederick Shields. Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1861 0 The Early Italian Poets From Ciullo D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300) (the Princeton illustrated copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1861 0 The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300) (Proof Copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1861 0 The Early Italian Poets From Ciullo D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300), the Wrenn Proof Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1861 0 The Early Italian Poets From Ciullo D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300), the Yale University Beinecke Library Proof Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1861 0 Dante and His Circle: With the Italian Poets Preceding Him (1100—1200—1300). Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1874 0 The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 2 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0