nor years undo. 
The fire whereof I speak, is my great cheer;
    Such power it hath to renovate and raise
    Me who was almost numbered with the dead;
And since by nature fire doth find its sphere
    Soaring aloft, and I am all ablaze,
    Heavenward with it my flight must needs be sped.

LX.

FIRST READING.

LOVE’S JUSTIFICATION.

Ben puo talor col mio.

Sometimes my love I dare to entertain
    With soaring hope not over-credulous;
    Since if all human loves were impious,
    Unto what end did God the world ordain? 
For loving thee what license is more plain
    Than that I praise thereby the glorious
    Source of all joys divine, that comfort us
    In thee, and with chaste fires our soul sustain? 
False hope belongs unto that love alone
    Which with declining beauty wanes and dies,
    And, like the face it worships, fades away. 
That hope is true which the pure heart hath known,
    Which alters not with time or death’s decay,
    Yielding on earth earnest of Paradise.

LX.

SECOND READING.

LOVE’S JUSTIFICATION.

Ben puo talor col casto.

It must be right sometimes to entertain
    Chaste love with hope not over-credulous;
    Since if all human loves were impious,
    Unto what end did God the world ordain? 
If I love thee and bend beneath thy reign,
    ’Tis for the sake of beauty glorious
    Which in thine eyes divine is stored for us,
    And drives all evil thought from its domain. 
That is not love whose tyranny we own
    In loveliness that every moment dies;
    Which, like the face it worships, fades away: 
True love is that which the pure heart hath known,
    Which alters not with time or death’s decay,
    Yielding on earth earnest of Paradise.

LXI.

AFTER THE DEATH OF VITTORIA COLONNA.

IRREPARABLE LOSS.

Se ’l mie rozzo martello.

When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
    Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will,
    Following his hand who wields and guides it still,
    It moves upon another’s feet alone: 
But that which dwells in heaven, the world doth fill
    With beauty by pure motions of its own;
    And since tools fashion tools which else were none,
    Its life makes all that lives with living skill. 
Now, for that every stroke excels the more
    The higher at the forge it doth ascend,
    Her soul that fashioned mine hath sought the skies: 
Wherefore unfinished I must meet my end,
    If God, the great artificer, denies
    That aid which was unique on earth before.

LXII.