some
words of it. And as, in this battle of thoughts, those which spoke for
her won the victory, it seemed to me becoming to address her, and I said
this sonnet, which begins, 'A gentle thought'; and I called it _gentle_
because I was speaking to a gentle lady,--but otherwise it was most
vile.

"A gentle thought that of you holds discourse
Cometh now frequently with me to dwell,
And in so sweet a way of Love doth tell,
My heart to yield unto him he doth force.
"'Who, then, is this,' the soul says to the heart,
'Who cometh to bring comfort to our mind?
And is his virtue of so potent kind,
That other thoughts he maketh to depart?'
"'O saddened soul,' the heart to her replies,
'This is a little spirit fresh from Love,
Whose own desires he before me brings;
"'His very life and all his power doth move
Forth from the sweet compassionating eyes
Of her so grieved by our sufferings.'"

"One day, about the ninth hour, there arose within me a strong
imagination opposed to this adversary of reason. For I seemed to see
the glorified Beatrice in that crimson garment in which she had first
appeared to my eyes, and she seemed to me young, of the same age as when
I first saw her. Then I began to think of her, and, calling to mind the
past time in its order, my heart began to repent bitterly of the desire
by which it had so vilely allowed itself for some days to be possessed,
contrary to the constancy of reason. And this so wicked desire being
expelled, all my thoughts returned to their most gentle Beatrice, and
I say that thenceforth I began to think of her with my heart possessed
utterly by shame, so that it was often manifested by my sighs; for
almost all of them, as they went forth, told what was discoursed of in
my heart,--the name of that gentlest one, and how she had gone from
us.... And I wished that my wicked desire and vain temptation might be
known to be at an end; and that the rhymed words which I had before
written might induce no doubt, I proposed to make a sonnet in which I
would include what I have now told."

With this sonnet Dante ends the story in the "Vita Nuova" of the
wandering of his eyes, and the short faithlessness of his heart; but
it is retold with some additions in the "Convito" or "Banquet," a work
written many years afterward; and in this later version there are some
details which serve to fill out and illustrate the earlier narrative.[L]
The same tende