"Cara Fiamma, per cui 'l core ò caldo,
Que' che vi manda questa Visione
Giovanni è di Boccaccio da Certaldo."
As the title proclaims, the poem is a Vision—a vision which Love discovers to the poet-lover. While he is falling asleep a lady appears to him who is to be his guide. He follows her in a dream, and together they come to a noble castello; there by a steep stairway they enter into the promised land, as it were, of Happiness, choosing not the wearying road of Good to the left, but passing through a wide portal into a spacious room on the right, whence come delicious sounds of festa. Two youths, one dressed in white, the other in red, after disputing with his guide, lead him into the festa, where he sees four triumphs—of Wisdom, of Fame, of Love, and of Fortune. In the triumph of Wisdom he sees all the learned men, philosophers, and poets of the world, among them Homer, Virgil, and Cicero, Horace, Sallust, Livy, Galen, Cato, Apuleius, Claudian, Martial, and Dante.[277] In the triumph of Fame he sees all the famous heroes and heroines of Antiquity and the Middle Age, among them Saturn, Electra, Baal, Paris, Absalom, Hecuba, Brutus, Jason, Medea, Hannibal, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Giulia, and Solomon, Charlemagne, Charles of Apulia, and Corradino.[278] The uniformity of the descriptions is pleasantly interrupted by certain apparitions, among them Robert of Naples[279] and Boccaccino, [280] besides a host of priests.[281] Once in speaking of the sufferings of poverty he seems to be writing of his own experiences:—
"Ha! lasso, quanto nelli orecchi fioco
Risuona altrui il senno del mendico,
Nè par che luce o caldo abbia 'l suo foco.
E 'l più caro parente gli è nemico,
Ciascun lo schifa, e se non ha moneta,
Alcun non è che 'l voglia per amico."[282]