"Cara union, che in si mirabil modo Fosti ordinata dal signor del cielo, Che lo spirto divino, e l'uman velo Legò con dolce ed amoroso nodo, Io, benchi lui di si bell'opra lodo, Pur cerco, e ad altri il mio pensier non celo, Sciorre il tuo laccio; ni più a caldo o gelo Serbarti; poi che qui di te non godo. Che l'alma chiusa in questo carcer rio Come nemico l'odia; onde smarrita Ne vive qui, nè vola ove desia. Quando sarà con suo gran sole unita, Felice giorno! allor contenta fia; Che sol nel viver suo conobbe vita." [Sidenote: SENTIMENTS IN HER POETRY.] Of which the subjoined rendering, prosaic and crabbed as it is, is perhaps hardly more so than the original. "Sweet bond, that wast ordain'd so wondrous well By the Almighty ruler of the sky, Who did unite in one sweet loving tie The godlike spirit and its fleshy shell, I, while I praise his loving work, yet try— Nor wish my thought from others to withhold— To loose thy knot; nor more, through heat or cold, Preserve thee, since in thee no joy have I. Therefore my soul, shut in this dungeon stern, Detests it as a foe; whence, all astray, She lives not here, nor flies where she would go. When to her glorious sun she shall return, Ah! then content shall come with that blest day, For she, but while he liv'd, a sense of life could know." In considering the collection of 117 sonnets, from which the above specimens have been selected, and which were probably the product of about seven or eight years, from 1526 to 1533–4 (in one she laments that the seventh year from her husband's death should have brought with it no alleviation of her grief); the most interesting question that suggests itself, is,—whether we are to suppose the sentiments expressed in them to be genuine outpourings of the heart, or rather to consider them all as part of the professional equipment of a poet, earnest only in the work of achieving a high and brilliant poetical reputation? The question is a prominent one, as regards the concrete notion to be formed of the sixteenth-century woman, Vittoria Colonna; and is not without interest as bearing on the great subject of woman's nature.