Next take, though more briefly, graver testimony—that of the great Italians and Greeks. You know well the plan of Dante’s great poem—that it is a love-poem to his dead lady; a song of praise for her watch over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to love, she yet saves him from destruction—saves him from hell. He is going eternally astray in despair; she comes down from heaven to his help, and throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, interpreting for him the most difficult truths, divine and human; and leading him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star. I do not insist upon Dante’s conception; if I began I could not cease: besides, you might think this a wild imagination of one poet’s heart. So I will rather read to you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a knight of Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic of the feeling of all the noblest men of the thirteenth, or early fourteenth, century, preserved among many other such records of knightly honour and love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered for us from among the early Italian poets. “For lo! thy law is passed That this my love should manifestly be To serve and honour thee: And so I do; and my delight is full, Accepted for the servant of thy rule. “Without almost, I am all rapturous, Since thus my will was set To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence: Nor ever seems it anything could rouse A pain or a regret. But on thee dwells my every thought and sense; Considering that from thee all virtues spread As from a fountain head,— _That in thy gift is wisdom’s best avail_, _And honour without fail_, With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. “Lady, since I conceived Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, _My life has been apart_ _In shining brightness and the place of truth_; Which till that time, good sooth, Groped among shadows in a darken’d place, Where many hours and days It hardly ever had remember’d good. But now my servitude Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. A man from a wild beast Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived.”