For I seemed to see
the glorified Beatrice in that crimson garment in which she had first
appeared to my eyes, and she seemed to me young, of the same age as when
I first saw her. Then I began to think of her, and, calling to mind the
past time in its order, my heart began to repent bitterly of the desire
by which it had so vilely allowed itself for some days to be possessed,
contrary to the constancy of reason. And this so wicked desire being
expelled, all my thoughts returned to their most gentle Beatrice, and
I say that thenceforth I began to think of her with my heart possessed
utterly by shame, so that it was often manifested by my sighs; for
almost all of them, as they went forth, told what was discoursed of in
my heart,--the name of that gentlest one, and how she had gone from
us.... And I wished that my wicked desire and vain temptation might be
known to be at an end; and that the rhymed words which I had before
written might induce no doubt, I proposed to make a sonnet in which I
would include what I have now told."
With this sonnet Dante ends the story in the "Vita Nuova" of the
wandering of his eyes, and the short faithlessness of his heart; but
it is retold with some additions in the "Convito" or "Banquet," a work
written many years afterward; and in this later version there are some
details which serve to fill out and illustrate the earlier narrative.
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