With these sonnets we should compare xxxvii., xxxix., xlvi., lxxv., lxxxvii., and ciii. Sonnet lxxxvii. is perhaps the most beautiful of these poems written in despair: it has been quoted above.[379]
In sonnets xiv. and lxxi. he tries to rouse himself, to free himself, in vain, from love;[380] while in sonnet lxxii. he likens himself to Prometheus. He bemoans his fortune again and again in sonnets ii., xxx., lii., cx.; while in xx. and cvii. he tries to hope in some future. Whether that future ever came we do not know. There is no hint of it in the sonnets, and on the whole one is inclined to think it did not.[381] His last sight of Fiammetta, recorded after her death, we may find in the beautiful sonnet so marvellously translated by Rossetti:—[382]
"Round her red garland and her golden hair
I saw a fire about Fiammetta's head;
Thence to a little cloud I watched it fade,
Than silver or than gold more brightly fair;
And like a pearl that a gold ring doth bear,
Even so an angel sat therein, who sped
Alone and glorious throughout heaven, array'd
In sapphires and in gold that lit the air.