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• When I made answer, I began: “Alas!
• How many sweet thoughts and how much desire
• Led these two onward to the dolorous pass!”
• Then turned to them, as who would fain inquire,
• And said: “Francesca, these thine agonies
• Wring tears for pity and grief that they inspire:
• But tell me,—in the season of sweet sighs,
• When and what way did Love instruct you so
• That he in your vague longing made you wise?”
• 10Then she to me: “There is no greater woe
• Than the remembrance of past happy days
• In misery; and this thy guide doth know.
• But if the first beginnings to retrace
• Of our sad love can yield thee solace here,
• So will I be as one that weeps and says.
• One day we read, for pastime and sweet cheer,
• Of Lancelot, how he found Love tyrannous;
• We were alone and without any fear.
• Our eyes were drawn together, reading thus,
• 20Full oft, and still our cheeks would pale and glow;
• But one sole point it was that conquered us.
• For when we read of that great lover, how
• He kissed the smile which he had longed to win,
• Then he whom nought can sever from me now
• For ever, kissed my mouth, all quivering.
• A Galahalt was the book, and he that writ:
• Upon that day we read no more therein.”
• At the tale told, while one soul uttered it,
• The other wept: a woe so pitiable
• 30That I was seized, like death, in swooning-fit,
• And even as a dead body falls, I fell.

DANTE G. ROSSETTI.

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