Voi che savete ragionar d’Amore,
“Ye who know how to discourse of love,” which is referred to in the third treatise of the Convivio (iii. 9). But the defect is on the lover’s own part, and in her light the difficulties which sundered him and her are dispersed like morning clouds before the face of the sun. This mystical worship culminates in the supreme hymn to his spiritual mistress, whose body is Wisdom and whose soul is Love:
Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,
“Love that in my mind discourses to me of my lady desirously,” which is the second canzone of the Convivio (quoted in V. E. ii. 6), the amorous song that Casella was to sing “met in the milder shades of Purgatory.” It is one of Dante’s lyrical masterpieces. Hardly less beautiful is the canzone, likewise cited in the De Vulgari Eloquentia (V. E. ii. 5, II):
Amor, che movi tua vertù dal cielo,
“Love that movest thy power from heaven”; with a mystical comparison of the workings of love to those of the sun and striking lines on the supernatural power of the illumined imagination. This allegorical group may be regarded as closed by the canzone:
Io sento si d’Amor la gran possanza,
“I feel so the great power of love,” in which Dante represents himself as too young to obtain his lady’s grace, but is content to serve on, finding the quest of philosophic truth its own reward. This poem has two commiati (the commiato, or tornata, being the stanza or part of a stanza, or a few independent lines, added as an address or farewell at the end of a canzone); both seem to imply that philosophic verse may be the instrument of political or social reform.[15]
(d) Dante originally held that Italian poetry should only be used for writing upon love, and therefore, in his younger days, a philosophical poem would naturally take the form of a love ode. In the Vita Nuova, he argues “against those who rhyme upon any matter other than amorous; seeing that such mode of speech was originally found for speaking of love” (V. N. xxv). His views naturally widened before he wrote his later canzoni (cf. V. E. ii. 2); but when, lacking inspiration for a higher lyrical flight or baffled by some metaphysical problem, he turns to set erring men right in didactic canzoni on some humbler ethical subject, he represents himself as so doing because out of favour with his lady or deserted by love. Thus, “The sweet rhymes of love, which I was wont to seek in my thoughts, needs must I leave”—
Le dolci rime d’amor, ch’i’ solia