"If it be true that any beauteous thing Raises the pure and just desire of man From earth to God, the eternal fount of all, Such I believe my love: for, as in her So fair, in whom I all besides forget, I view the gentle work of her Creator; I have no care for any other thing Whilst thus I love. Nor is it marvellous, Since the effect is not of my own power, If the soul doth by nature, tempted forth, Enamored through the eyes, Repose upon the eyes which it resembleth, And through them riseth to the primal love, As to its end, and honors in admiring: For who adores the Maker needs must love his work." "If a chaste love, exalted piety, If equal fortune between two who love, Whose every joy and sorrow are the same, One spirit only governing two hearts,-- If one soul in two bodies made eterne, Raising them both to Heaven on equal wings,-- If the same flame, one undivided ray, Shine forth to each, from inward unity,-- If mutual love, for neither's self reserved, Desiring only the return of love,-- If that which one desires the other swift Anticipates, impelled by an unconscious power,-- Are signs of an indissoluble faith, Shall aught have power to loosen such a bond?" JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR. In 1544 the Colonna estates were confiscated by the pope, after a contest between Paul III. and the powerful Colonnas, in which the latter were defeated, and Vittoria retired to the Benedictine Convent of St. Anna. Here her health failed. The celebrated physician and poet Fracastoro said, "Would that a physician for her mind could be found! Otherwise, the fairest light in this world will, from causes by no means clear, be extinguished and taken from our eyes." At the beginning of 1547 she became dangerously ill, and was conveyed to the palace of her relative Giuliano Cesarini, the only one of her kindred in Rome. She died towards the last of February, 1547, at the age of fifty-seven. She requested to be buried like the sisters with whom she last resided, and so entirely were her wishes carried out that her place of sepulture is unknown. Michael Angelo staid beside her to the very last. When she was gone he almost lost his senses. Says his pupil, Condivi, "He bore such a love to her that I remember to have heard him say that he grieved at nothing so much as that when he went to see her pass from this life he had not kissed her brow or her face, as he kissed her hand. After her death he frequently stood trembling and as if insensible." He wrote several sonnets to her memory.