Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore,
“To the gentle heart doth Love ever repair,” the first great Italian lyric of this dolce stil nuovo, set forth an ideal creed of love which Dante made his own, and is the most fitting introduction to the Vita Nuova and the Rime. Love has its proper dwelling in the gentle heart, as light in the sun, for Nature created them simultaneously for each other, and they cannot exist apart. “The fire of Love is caught in gentle heart as virtue in the precious stone, to which no power descends from the star before the sun makes it a gentle thing. After the sun has drawn forth from it all which there is vile, the star gives it power. So the heart which is made by Nature true, pure, and noble, a woman like a star enamours.” But a base nature will extinguish love as water does fire. Unless a man has true gentlehood in his soul, no high birth or ancient lineage will ennoble him. Even as God fills the celestial intelligence with the Beatific Vision of His Essence, so the bella donna inspires him of gentle heart with the perfection of faithful love. Nor need the poet fear to take divine things as similitudes of his love, for such love as this is celestial, and will be accepted in Paradise:
My lady, God shall ask, “What daredst thou?”
(When my soul stands with all her acts reviewed)
“Thou passedst Heaven, into My sight, as now,
To make Me of vain love similitude.
To Me doth praise belong,
And to the Queen of all the realm of grace
Who slayeth fraud and wrong.”
Then may I plead: “As though from Thee he came,