With reverent humility and tenderness Dante is leading Beatrice into the enchanted boat of which he dreamed. She yields her hands to him and seems to pause beneath his earnest gaze as she steps down. Around her are the companions of their voyage,—Guido Calvacanti with his lady Giovanna, also known as Primavera, and Lapo degli Uberti and his love. “Beata Beatrix,”—“The Blessed Beatrice,”—depicts, not the actual death of Dante’s beloved, but rather a mystic trance in which is made known to her the nearness of her end. She sits on a balcony overlooking the city of Florence, which is already shadowed by the coming loss. Before her is a sundial, marking the fatal hour. A dove, flying into her lap, carries a poppy-blossom, the symbol of sleep. The lovely face of Beatrice is upturned, as if to greet the unseen messenger, and full of perfect peace. She seems to have attained the sight of blessedness, and to be yielding her spirit to a deep and sweet content, but the earthly weariness lingers about her brows and on her pale and parted lips. In the background, Dante and the figure of Love are seen passing in the street below. Love holds a flaming heart in his hands, and they both gaze in grief and awe at the rapt countenance which the dignity of the coming death suffuses with exquisite pathos and transcendent charm. In the features of this Beatrice, more than in any other, Rossetti has regained and embodied the thought that found superlative expression in Michaelangelo,—“the notion of _inspired_ sleep, of faces charged with dreams.”[14]