Lontano a te, la mia crudel fortuna."
If this refers to Fiammetta, as seems certain, it should have been written in 1340-1. Finally, it is natural to suppose that the greater part of the sonnets written to Fiammetta living were composed between 1331 and 1341, while those to Fiammetta dead were written after 1348. From these facts I pass on to make the only possible distribution of the Rime that our present knowledge allows.
Let us begin by distinguishing the love poems from the rest, which for the most part belong to Boccaccio's old age. There are thirty-two poems which are not concerned with love, namely, twenty-nine sonnets: Nos. i., vi.-xii., xxvi.-xxviii., xxxvi., xlii., xlix., lvi., lxviii., lxxiv., lxxviii., xci.-xcvi., xcix., ci., Poi Satiro, Saturna al coltivar, Allor che regno, and to these we may add the capitolo, the ballata of the beautiful ladies, and the madrigal O giustizia regina.
There are nine, if not eleven, sonnets written in morte di Madonna Fiammetta: (xix.?), xxi., xxix., li., (lviii.?), lx., lxvii., lxxiii., lxxxviii., xc., xcviii.
All the rest are love poems. Let us begin with them. And the first question that must be answered is: Were they all written to Fiammetta, or were some of them composed for one or other of the women with whom Boccaccio from time to time was in relations?
Crescini tells us that it is only just to admit that atleast the greater part of the love poems of Boccaccio refer to Fiammetta. Landau is more precise, and Antona Traversi follows him in naming sonnets c. and ci. (the latter we do not call a love poem) as written for Pampinea or Abrotonia. To these Antona Traversi adds sonnets xii. and xvii. (the former we do not call a love poem), which he thinks were written for one of the ladies Boccaccio loved before he met Fiammetta.[371] I give them both in Rossetti's translation:—
"By a clear well, within a little field
Full of green grass and flowers of every hue,
Sat three young girls, relating (as I knew)
Their loves. And each had twined a bough to shield