At Lady Beatrice's Refusal Of Advice

Some friends suggested that, soon as we can,
we should get naked; soon as possible;
that I, a girl, should make this boy a man
and, reaching through his flesh, inspire his soul.
But I have done that---in his poetry---
without recourse to sins of fornication.
(Of course, the teasing prospects of temptation
still lurk, with promise of false delectation;
to cause in us a spiritual miscarriage
if we make mockery of licit marriage.)
He says, in bliss, that he will write of me
in ways no woman has been, in the past,
a monument to our love that will last
until, and then into, eternity.

 

Starward

 

[jlc]

Author's Notes/Comments: 

I believe Dante's promise to Beatrice, on her deathbed, to write of her as no woman had ever been written of before, was a final reiteration, rather than its original presentation.  From my own experience of adolescent love, decades ago, I am led to believe that the first offer of the promise had to occur in their adolescence, and in their more casual encounters.

View s74rw4rd's Full Portfolio