[In the following essay, origianlly written in 1859, Norton discusses the development of Dante's thought about Beatrice and the relationship of the Vita Nuova to his other works.]

The year 1289 was one marked in the annals of Florence and of Italy by events which are still famous, scored by the genius of Dante upon the memory of the world. It was in this year that Count Ugolino and his sons and grandsons were starved by the Pisans in their tower prison. A few months later, Francesca da Rimini was murdered by her husband. Between the dates of these two terrible events the Florentines had won the great victory of Campaldino; and thus, in this short space, the materials had been given to the poet for the two best-known and most powerful stories and for one of the most striking episodes of the Divina Commedia.

In the great and hard-fought battle of Campaldino Dante himself took part. "I was at first greatly afraid," he says, in a letter of which but a few sentences have been preserved, "but at the end I felt the greatest joy—according to the various chances of the battle." When the victorious army returned to Florence, a splendid procession, with the clergy at its head, with the arts of the city each under its banner, and with all manner of pomp, went out to meet it. There were long-continued feasts and rejoicings. The battle had been fought on the 11th of June, the day of St. Barnabas, and the Republic, though already engaged in magnificent works of church building, decreed that a new church should be erected in honor of the Saint on whose day the victory had been won.

A little later in that summer, Dante was one of a troop of Florentines who joined the forces of Lucca in levying war upon the Pisan territory. The stronghold of Caprona was taken, and Dante was present at its capture; for he says, "I saw the foot-soldiers, who, having made terms, came out from Caprona, afraid when they beheld themselves among so many enemies" (Inferno, XXI, 94-96).

Thus, during a great part of the summer of 1289, Dante was in active service as a soldier. He was no lovesick idler, no mere home-keeping writer of verses, but was already taking his part in the affairs of the state which he was afterwards to be called on for a time to assist in governing, and he was laying up those stores of experience which were to serve as the material out of which his vivifying imagination was to form the great national poem of Italy. But of this active life, of these personal engagements, of these terrible events which took such strong possession of his soul, there is no word, no suggestion even, in the book of his New Life. In it there is no echo, however faint, of those storms of public violence and private passion which broke dark over Italy. In the midst of the tumults which sprang from the jealousies of rival states, from the internal discords of cities, from the divisions of parties, from the bitterness of domestic quarrels—this little book is full of tenderness and peace, and tells its story of love as if the world were the abode of tranquility. No external excitements could break into the inner chambers of Dante's heart to displace the love that dwelt within them. The contrast between the purity and the serenity of the Vita Nuova and the coarseness and cruelty of the deeds that were going on while it was being written is complete. Every man in some sort leads a double life—one real and his own, the other seeming and the world's—but with few is the separation so entire as it was with Dante.

But in these troubled times the New Life was drawing to its close. The spring of 1290 had come, and the poet, now twenty-five years old, sixteen years having passed since he first beheld Beatrice, was engaged in writing a poem to tell what effect the virtue of his lady wrought upon him. He had written but the following portion when it was broken off, never to be resumed:

So long hath Love retained me at his hest,
And to his sway hath so accustomed me,
That as at first he cruel used to be,
So in my heart he now doth sweetly rest.
Thus when by him my strength is
  dispossessed,
So that the spirits seem away to flee,
My frail soul feels such sweetness verily,
That with it pallor doth my face invest.
Then Love o'er me such mastery doth seize,
He makes my sighs in words to take their
  way,
And they unto my lady go to pray
That she to give me further grace would
  please
Where'er she sees me, this to me occurs,
Nor can it be believed what humbleness is
 hers.

Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo! facta est quasi vidua domina gentium!

(How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! how is she become as a widow, she that was great among the nations! [Lamentations, I, 1])

I was yet engaged upon this Canzone, and had finished the above stanza, when the Lord of justice called this most gentle one unto glory under the banner of that holy Queen Mary whose name was ever spoken with greatest reverence by this blessed Beatrice.

And although it might give pleasure, were I now to tell somewhat of her departure from us, it is not my intention to treat of it here for three reasons. The first is, that it is no part of the present design, as may be seen in the poem of this little book. The second is, that, supposing it were so, my pen would not be sufficient to treat of it in a fitting manner. The third is, that, supposing both the one and the other, it would not be becoming in me to treat of it, since, in doing so, I should be obliged to praise myself—a thing altogether blameworthy in whosoever does it—and therefore I leave this subject to some other narrator.

Nevertheless, since in what precedes there has been occasion to make frequent mention of the number nine, and apparently not without reason, and since in her departure this number appeared to have a large place, it is fitting to say something on this point, seeing that it seems to belong to our design. Wherefore I will first tell how it had place in her departure, and then I will assign some reason why this number was so friendly to her. I say, that, according to the mode of reckoning in Italy, her most noble soul departed in the first hour of the ninth day of the month; and according to the reckoning, in Syria, she departed in the ninth month of the year, since the first month there is Tismim, which with us is October; and according to our reckoning, she departed in that year of our indiction, that is, of the years of the Lord, in which the perfect number [the number ten] was completed for the ninth time in that century in which she had been set in the world; and she was of the Christians of the thirteenth century.

One reason why this number was so friendly to her may be this: since, according to Ptolemy and the Christian truth, there are nine heavens which move, and, according to the common astrological opinion, these heavens work effects here below according to their relative positions, this number was her friend, to the end that it might be understood that at her generation all the nine movable heavens were in most perfect conjunction. This is one reason; but considering more subtilely and according to infallible truth, this number was she herself—I speak in a similitude, and I mean as follows. The number three is the root of nine, since, without any other number, multiplied by itself, it makes nine—as we see plainly that three times three are nine. Then, if three is the factor by itself of nine, and the Author of Miracles by himself is three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are three and one—this lady was accompanied by the number nine that it might be understood that she was a nine, that is, a miracle, whose only root is the marvellous Trinity. Perhaps a more subtle person might discover some more subtle reason for this; but this is the one that I see for it, and which pleases me the best.

After thus treating of the number nine in its connection with Beatrice, Dante goes on to say, that, when this most gentle lady had gone from this world, the city appeared widowed and despoiled of every dignity; whereupon he wrote to the princes of the earth an account of its condition, beginning with the words of Jeremiah which he quoted at the entrance of this new matter. The remainder of this letter he does not give, because it was in Latin, and in this work it was his intention, from the beginning, to write only in the vulgar tongue; and such was the understanding of the friend for whom he writes—that friend being, as we may suppose, Guido Cavalcanti, whom Dante, it may be remembered, has already spoken of as the chief among his friends. Then succeeds a Canzone lamenting the death of Beatrice, which, instead of being followed by a verbal exposition, as is the case with all that have gone before, is preceded by one, in order that it may seem, as it were, desolate and like a widow at its end. And this arrangement is preserved in regard to all the remaining poems in the little volume. In this poem he says that the Eternal Sire called Beatrice to himself, because he saw that this world was not worthy of such a gentle thing; and he says of his own life, that no tongue could tell what it has been since his lady went away to heaven.

Among the sonnets ascribed to Dante is one which, if it be his, must have been written about this time, and which, although not included in the Vita Nuova, seems not unworthy to find a place here. Its imagery, at least, connects it with some of the sonnets in the earlier portion of the book.

One day came Melancholy unto me,
  And said, "With thee I will awhile abide";
  And, as it seemed, attending at her side,
  Anger and Grief did bear her company.
"Depart! Away!" I cried out eagerly.
  Then like a Greek she unto me replied;
  And while she stood discoursing in her
   pride,
  I looked, and Love approaching us I see.
In cloth of black full strangely was he clad,
   A little hood he wore upon his head,
   And down his face tears flowing fast he
   had.
"Poor little wretch! what ails thee?" then I
  said.
And he replied, "I woful am, and sad,
Sweet brother, for our lady who is dead."

About this time, Dante tells us, a person who stood to him in friendship next to his first friend, and who was of the closest relationship to his glorious lady, so that we may believe it was her brother, came to him and prayed him to write something on a lady who was dead. Dante, believing that he meant the blessed Beatrice, accordingly wrote for him a sonnet; and then, reflecting that so short a poem appeared but a poor and bare service for one who was so nearly connected with her, added to it a Canzone, and gave both to him.

As the months passed on, his grief still continued fresh, and the memory of his lady dwelt continually with him. It happened, that,

on that day which completed a year since this lady was made one of the citizens of eternal life, I was seated in a place where, remembering her, I drew an Angel upon certain tablets. And while I was drawing it, I turned my eyes, and saw at my side certain men to whom it was becoming to do honor, and who were looking at what I did; and, as was afterward told me, they had been there now some time before I perceived them. When I saw them, I rose, and, saluting them, said, "Another was just now with me, and on that account I was in thought." When these persons had gone, I returned to my work, that is, to drawing figures of Angels; and while doing this, a thought came to me of saying words in rhyme, as for an anniversary poem for her, and of addressing them to those who had come to me. Then I said this sonnet, which has two beginnings:

FIRST BEGINNING.

Unto my mind remembering had come
  The gentle lady, with such pure worth
   graced,
  That by the Lord Most High she had been
   placed
  Within the heaven of peace, where Mary
 hath her home.

SECOND BEGINNING.

Unto my mind had come, indeed, in thought,
  That gentle one for whom Love's tears are
   shed,
  Just at the time when, by his power led,
  To see what I was doing you were brought.
Love, who within my mind did her perceive,
  Was roused awake within my wasted heart,
  And said unto my sighs, "Go forth!
   depart!"
  Whereon each one in grief did take its
   leave.
Lamenting they from out my breast did go,
  And uttering a voice that often led
  The grievous tears unto my saddened eyes.
But those which issued with the greatest woe,
  "O noble soul," they in departing said,

"To-day makes up the year since thou to
 heaven didst rise."

The preceding passage is one of the many in the Vita Nuova which are of peculiar interest, as illustrating the personal tastes of Dante, and the common modes of his life. "I was drawing," he says, "the figure of an Angel"; and this statement is the more noticeable, because Giotto, the man who set painting on its modern course, was not yet old enough to have exercised any influence upon Dante. The friendship which afterwards existed between them had its beginning at a later period. At this time Cimabue still held the field. He often painted angels around the figures of the Virgin and her Child; and in his most famous picture, in the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, there are certain angels of which Vasari says, with truth, that, though painted in the Greek manner, they show an approach toward the modern style of drawing. These angels may well have seemed beautiful to eyes accustomed to the hard unnaturalness of earlier works. The love of Art pervaded Florence, and a nature so sensitive and so sympathetic as Dante's could not but partake of it in the fullest measure. Art was then no adjunct of sentimentalism, no encourager of idleness. It was connected with all that was most serious and all that was most delightful in life. It is difficult, indeed, to realize the delight which it gave, and the earnestness with which it was followed at this period, when it seemed, as by a miracle, to fling off the winding-sheet which had long wrapped its stiffened limbs, and to come forth with new and unexampled life.

The strength and the intelligence of Dante's love of Art are shown in many beautiful passages and allusions in the Divina Commedia. There was something of universality, not only in his imagination, but also in his acquisitions. Of the sources of learning which were then open, there was not one which he had not visited; of the fountains of inspiration, not one out of which he had not drunk. All the arts—poetry, painting, sculpture, and music—were alike dear to him. His Canzoni were written to be sung; and one of the most charming scenes in the great poem is that in which is described his meeting with his friend Casella, the musician, who sang to him one of his own Canzoni so sweetly, that "the sweetness still within me sounds."

"Dante took great delight in music, and was an excellent draughtsman," says Aretino, his second biographer; and Boccaccio reports, that in his youth he took great pleasure in music, and was the friend of all the best musicians and singers of his time. There is, perhaps, in the whole range of literature, no nobler homage to Art than that which is contained in the tenth and twelfth cantos of the Purgatory, in which Dante represents the Creator himself as using its means to impress the lessons of truth upon those whose souls were being purified for the final attainment of heaven. The passages are too long for extract, and though their wonderful beauty tempts us to linger over them, we must return to the course of the story of Dante's life as it appears in the concluding pages of the New Life.

Many months had passed since Beatrice's death, when Dante happened to be in a place which recalled the past time to him, and filled him with grief. While standing here, he raised his eyes and saw a young and beautiful lady looking out from a window compassionately upon his sad aspect. The tenderness of her look touched his heart and moved his tears. Many times afterwards he saw her, and her face was always full of compassion, and pale, so that it reminded him of the look of his own most noble lady. But at length his eyes began to delight too much in seeing her; wherefore he often cursed their vanity, and esteemed himself as vile, and there was a hard battle within himself between the remembrance of his lady and the new desire of his eyes.

At length, he says,

The sight of this lady brought me into so new a condition, that I often thought of her as of one who pleased me exceedingly,—and I thought of her thus: "This is a gentle, beautiful, young, and discreet lady, and she has perhaps appeared by will of Love, in order that my life may find repose." And often I thought more amorously, so that my heart consented in it, that is, approved my reasoning. And after it had thus consented, I, moved as if by reason, reflected, and said to myself, "Ah, what thought is this that in so vile a way seeks to console me, and leaves me scarcely any other though?" Then another thought rose up and said, "Now that thou hast been in so great tribulation of Love, why wilt thou not withdraw thyself from such bitterness? Thou seest that this is an inspiration that sets the desires of Love before thee, and proceeds from a place no less gentle than the eyes of the lady who has shown herself so pitiful toward thee." Wherefore, I, having often thus combated with myself, wished to say some words of it. And as, in this battle of thoughts, those which spoke for her won the victory, it seemed to me becoming to address her, and I said this sonnet, which begins, "A gentle thought"; and I called it gentle because I was speaking to a gentle lady—but otherwise it was most vile.

A gentle thought that of you holds discourse
  Cometh now frequently with me to dwell,
  And in so sweet a way of Love doth tell,
  My heart to yield unto him he doth force.
"Who, then, is this," the soul says to the
 heart,
  "Who cometh to bring comfort to our
   mind?
  And is his virtue of so potent kind,
  That other thoughts he maketh to depart?"
"O saddened soul," the heart to her replies;

  "This is a little spirit fresh from Love,
  Whose own desires he before me brings;
"His very life and all his power doth move
  Forth the sweet compassionating eyes
  Of her so grieved by our sufferings."

One day, about the ninth hour, there arose within me a strong imagination opposed to this adversary of reason. 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. The same tender and refined feeling which inspires the Vita Nuova gives its tone to all the passages in which the poet recalls his youthful days and the memory of Beatrice in this work of his sorrowful manhood. In the midst of its serious and philosophic discourse this little story winds in and out its thread of personal recollection and of sweet romantic sentiment. It affords new insight into the recesses of Dante's heart, and exhibits the permanence of the gracious qualities of his youth.

Its opening sentence is full of the imagery of love.

Since the death of that blessed Beatrice who lives in heaven with the angels, and on earth with my soul, the star of Venus had twice shone in the different seasons, as the star of morning and of evening, when that gentle lady, of whom I have made mention near the close of the New Life, first appeared before my eyes accompanied by Love, and gained some place in my mind.

… And before this love could become perfect, there arose a great battle between the thought that sprang from it and that which was opposed to it, and which still held the fortress of my mind for the glorified Beatrice [Convito, Tratt. ii c. 3].

And so hard was this struggle, and so painful, that Dante took refuge from it in the composition of a poem addressed to the Angelic Intelligences who move the third heaven, that is, the heaven of Venus; and it is to the exposition of the true meaning of this Canzone that the second book or treatise of the Convito is directed. In one of the later chapters he says (and the passage is a most striking one, from its own declaration, as well as from its relation to the vision of the Divina Commedia)—

The life of my heart was wont to be a sweet and delightful thought, which often went to the feet of the Lord of those to whom I speak, that is, to God for, thinking, I contemplated the kingdom of the Blessed. And I tell [in my poem] the final cause of my mounting thither in thought, when I say, "There I beheld a lady in glory"; [and I say this] in order that it may be understood that I was certain, and am certain, through her gracious revelation, that she was in heaven, whither I in my thoughts oftentimes went—as it were, seized up. And this made me desirous of death, that I might go there where she was [Convito, Tratt. ii. c. 8].

Following upon the chapter in which this remarkable passage occurs is one which is chiefly occupied with a digression upon the immortality of the soul—and with discourse upon this matter, says Dante, "it will be beautiful to finish speaking of that living and blessed Beatrice, of whom I intend to say no more in this book and I believe and affirm and am certain that I shall pass after this to another and better life, in which that glorious lady lives of whom my soul was enamored" [Convito, Tratt. ii. c. 9].

But it is not from the Convito alone that this portion of the Vita Nuova receives illustration. In that passage of the Purgatory in which Beatrice is described as appearing in person to her lover the first time since her death, she addresses him in words of stern rebuke of his fickleness and his infidelity to her memory. The whole scene is, perhaps, unsurpassed in imaginative reality; the vision appears to have an actual existence, and the poet himself is subdued by the power of his own imagination. He tells the words of Beatrice with the same feeling with which he would have repeated them, had they fallen on his mortal ear. His grief and shame are real, and there is no element of feigning in them. That in truth he had seemed to himself to listen to and to behold what he tells, it is scarcely possible to doubt. Beatrice says,

Some while at heart my presence kept him
  sound;
   My girlish eyes to his observance renting,
I led him with me on the right way bound.

   When of my second age the steps
    ascending,
I bore my life into another sphere,
   Then stole he from me, after others
   bending.
When I arose from flesh to spirit clear,
  When beauty, worthiness, upon me grew,
I was to him less pleasing and less dear.
[Purgatory, c. xxx. vv. 118-26]

But although Beatrice only gives utterance to the self-reproaches of Dante, we have seen already how fully he had atoned for this first and transient unfaithfulness of his heart. The remainder of the Vita Nuova shows how little she had lost of her power over him, how reverently he honored her memory, how constant was his love of her whom he should see never again with his earthly eyes. Returning to the New Life—"After this tribulation," he says,

at that time when many people were going to see the blessed image which Jesus Christ left to us as the likeness of his most beautiful countenance, which my lady now beholds in glory, it happened that certain pilgrims passed through a street which is almost in the middle of that city where the gentlest lady was born, lived, and died—and they went along, as it seemed to me, very pensive. And thinking about them, I said to myself, "These appear to me to be pilgrims from a far-off region, and I do not believe that they have even heard speak of this lady, and they know nothing of her; their thoughts are rather of other things than of her; for, perhaps, they are thinking of their distant friends, whom we do not know." Then I said to myself, "I know, that, if these persons were from a neighboring country, they would show some sign of trouble as they pass through the midst of this grieving city." Then again I said, "If I could hold them awhile, I would indeed make them weep before they went out from this city; for I would say words to them which would make whoever should hear them weep." Then, when they had passed out of sight, I proposed to make a sonnet in which I would set forth that which I had said to myself; and in order that it might appear more pity-moving, I proposed to say it as if I had spoken to them, and I said this sonnet, which begins, "O pilgrims."

I called them pilgrims in wide sense of that word; for pilgrims may be understood in two ways—one wide, and one narrow. In the wide, whoever is out of his own country is so far a pilgrim; in the narrow use, by pilgrim is meant he only who goes to or returns from the house of St. James. Moreover, it is to be known that those who travel in the service of the Most High are called by three distinct terms. Those who go beyond the sea, whence often they bring back the palm, are called palmers. Those who go to the house of Galicia are called pilgrims, because the burial-place of St. James was more distant from his country than that of any other of the Apostles. And those are called romei who go to Rome, where these whom I call pilgrims were going.

O pilgrims, who in pensive mood move slow,
  Thinking perchance of those who absent
   are,
  Say, do ye come from land away so far
  As your appearance seems to us to show?
For ye weep not, the while ye forward go
   Along the middle of the mourning town,
   Seeming as persons who have nothing
   known
   Concerning the sad burden of her woe.
If, through your will to hear, your steps ye
   stay,
   Truly my sighing heart declares to me
   That ye shall afterwards depart in tears.
For she her Beatrice hath lost: and ye
   Shall know, the words that man of her may
   say
   Have power to make weep whoever hears.

Some time after this sonnet was written, two ladies sent to Dante, asking him for some of his rhymes. That he might honor their request, he wrote a new sonnet and sent it to them with two that he had previously composed. In his new sonnet, he told how his thought mounted to heaven, as a pilgrim, and beheld his lady in such condition of glory as could not be comprehended by his intellect; for our intellect, in regard to the souls of the blessed, is as weak as our eyes are to the sun. But though he could not clearly see where his thought led him, at least he understood that his thought told of his lady in glory.

Beyond the sphere that widest orbit hath
  Passeth the sigh that issues from my heart,
  While weeping Love doth unto him impart
  Intelligence which leads him on his path.
When at the wished-for place his flight he
 stays,
  A lady he beholds, in honor dight,
  And shining so, that, through her splendid
  light,
  The pilgrim spirit upon her doth gaze.
He sees her such that his reporting words
  I understand not, for he speaketh low
  And strange to the sad heart which makes
   him tell;
He speaketh of that gentle one, I know,
  Since oft he Beatrice's name records;
  So, ladies dear, I understand him well.

This was the last of the poems which Dante composed in immediate honor and memory of Beatrice, and is the last of those which he inserted in the Vita Nuova. It was not that his love grew cold, or that her image became faint in his remembrance; but, as he tells us in a few concluding and memorable words, from this time forward he devoted himself to preparation for a work in which the earthly Beatrice should have less part, while the heavenly and blessed spirit of her whom he had loved should receive more becoming honors. The lover's grief was to find no more expression; the lamentations for the loss which could never be made good to him were to cease; the exhibition of a personal sorrow was at an end. Love and grief, in their double ministry, had refined, enlarged, and exalted his spirit to the conception of a design unparalleled in its nature, and of which no intellectual genius, unpurged by suffering, and unpenetrated in its deepest recesses by the spiritualizing heats of emotion, would have been capable of conceiving. Moreover, as time wore on, its natural result was gradually to withdraw the poet from the influence of temporary excitements of feeling, resulting from his experience of love and death, and to bring him to the contemplation of life as affected by the presence and the memory of Beatrice in its eternal and universal relations.

He tells us in the Convito that,

after some time, my mind, which neither such consolation as I could give it, nor that offered to it by others, availed to comfort, determined to turn to that method by which others in grief had consoled themselves. And I set myself to read that book, but little known, of Boethius, in which in prison and exile he had consoled himself. And hearing, likewise, that Tully had written a book, in which, treating of friendship, he had offered some words of comfort to Laelius, a most excellent man, on the death of Scipio, his friend, I read this also. And although at first it was hard for me to enter into their meaning, I at length entered into it so far as my knowledge of language, and such little capacity as I had, enabled me; by means of which capacity, I had already, like one dreaming, seen many things, as may be seen in the New Life. And as it might happen that a man seeking silver should, beyond his expectation, find gold, which a hidden chance presents to him, not, perhaps, without Divine direction, so I, who sought for consolation, found not only a remedy for my tears, but also acquaintance with authors, with knowledge, and with books.

Nor did these serious and solitary studies withdraw him from the pursuit of wisdom among men and in the active world. Year by year, he entered more fully into the affairs of state, and took a larger portion of their conduct upon himself.

His heart kept fresh by abiding recollections of love, his faith quickened by and intermingled with the tenderest hopes, his imagination uplifted by the affection which overleaped the boundaries of the invisible world, and his intellect disciplined by study of books and of men, his experience enlarged by constant occupation in affairs, his judgment matured by the quick succession of important events in which he was involved—every part of his nature was thus prepared for the successful accomplishment of that great and sacred design which he set before himself now in his youth. Heaven had called and selected him for a work which even in his own eyes partook somewhat of the nature of a prophetic charge. His strength was to be tested and his capacity to be approved. Life was ordered for the fulfillment of his commission. The men to whom God intrusts a message for the world find the service to which they are appointed one in which they must be ready to sacrifice everything. Dante looked forward, even at the beginning, to the end, and saw what lay between.

The pages of the New Life fitly close with words of that life in which all things shall be made new, "and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." The little book ends thus:

Soon after this, a wonderful vision appeared to me, in which I saw things which made me purpose to speak no more of this blessed one until I could more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knoweth. So that, if it shall please Him through whom all things live, that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to speak of her as never was spoken of any woman. And then may it please Him who is the Lord of Grace, that my soul may go to behold the glory of its lady, the blessed Beatrice, who in glory looks upon the face of Him, qui est per omnia saecula benedictus [who is Blessed forever]!

In 1320, or perhaps not till 1321, the Paradiso was finished; in 1321, Dante died.