I felt a spirit of love begin to stir Within my heart, long time unfelt till then; And saw Love coming towards me, fair and fain (That I scarce knew him for his joyful cheer), Saying, “Be now indeed my worshipper!” And in his speech he laugh’d and laugh’d again. Then, while it was his pleasure to remain, I chanced to look the way he had drawn near, And saw the Ladies Joan and Beatrice Approach me, this the other following, One and a second marvel instantly. And even as now my memory speaketh this, Love spake it then: “The first is christen’d Spring; The second Love, she is so like to me.” _This sonnet has many parts: whereof the first tells how I felt awakened within my heart the accustomed tremor, and how it seemed that Love appeared to me joyful from afar. The second says how it appeared to me that Love spake within my heart, and what was his aspect. The third tells how, after he had in such wise been with me a space, I saw and heard certain things. The second part begins here, “Saying, ‘Be now;’” the third here, “Then, while it was his pleasure.” The third part divides into two. In the first, I say what I saw. In the second, I say what I heard; and it begins here, “Love spake it then.”_ It might be here objected unto me, (and even by one worthy of controversy,) that I have spoken of Love as though it were a thing outward and visible: not only a spiritual essence, but as a bodily substance also. The which thing, in absolute truth, is a fallacy; Love not being of itself a substance, but an accident of substance. Yet that I speak of Love as though it were a thing tangible and even human, appears by three things which I say thereof. And firstly, I say that I perceived Love coming towards me; whereby, seeing that _to come_ bespeaks locomotion, and seeing also how philosophy teacheth us that none but a corporeal substance hath locomotion, it seemeth that I speak of Love as of a corporeal substance. And secondly, I say that Love smiled: and thirdly, that Love spake; faculties (and especially the risible faculty) which appear proper unto man: whereby it further seemeth that I speak of Love as of a man. Now that this matter may be explained (as is fitting), it must first be remembered that anciently they who wrote poems of Love wrote not in the vulgar tongue, but rather certain poets in the Latin tongue. I mean, among us, although perchance the same may have been among others, and although likewise, as among the Greeks, they were not writers of spoken language, but men of letters, treated of these things.[24] And indeed it is not a great number of years since poetry began to be made in the vulgar tongue; the writing of rhymes in spoken language corresponding to the writing in metre of Latin verse, by a certain analogy. And I say that it is but a little while, because if we examine the language of _oco_ and the language of _sì_,[25] we shall not find in those tongues