"Quando sara che d'Eleonora mia
Potro goder in libertade amore."
(Verse stolen from Tasso and given to the Duke of Ferrara.)
It is but rarely, and with a light touch, that Angelo makes allusion to the extreme youth of her whom he loves,—
——"il corpo umano
Mal segue poi ... d'un angelletta
il volo."—(Sonnetto 15.)
Once only he speaks of light hair:—
"Sovra quel biondo crin" ...
(Sonnetto ultimo.)
Never does he write a word that can be referred to the difference of rank existing between them, to the splendour which had surrounded the cradle even of the daughter of the great citizen whom all Italy seems to have made the arbiter of her political combinations. Michel Angelo speaks only of the touching beauty of her who has subjugated him by "that serene grace, certain mark of the nobility and purity of a soul in perfect harmony with its Creator;" (Sonnetto 3, et passim in the first part.) Never does he give us to understand that his love received the least encouragement. It has been thought, however, that Luigia had detected the attachment of the youth whose genius had as yet been attested by no great work, and that she rewarded it by the tenderest friendship. It is certain that, in a transport of gratitude, Angelo wrote the beautiful verse—
"Unico spirto, e da me solo inteso!"
(Sonnetto 16.)
and that, in another morceau, he thanks "those beautiful eyes which lend him their sweet light, the genius that raises his own to heaven, the support that steadies his tottering steps,"
"Veggio co'bei vostri occhi un dolce
lume." ... —(Sonnetto 12.)
But, checking himself immediately in these half-revelations, the poet, on the contrary, multiplies the complaints torn from him by the coldness and apparent indifference of her whose beauty he celebrates, whom he can render immortal. See more particularly Sonnet 21—