Questi chi mai da me non sia diviso!
Are we not impelled to join in her prayer, wishing them happier in their union?
Petrarca. If there be no sin in it.
Boccaccio. Ay, and even if there be ... God help us!
What a sweet aspiration in each cesura of the verse! three love-sighs fixed and incorporate! Then, when she hath said
La bocca mi baciò, tutto tremante,
she stops: she would avert the eyes of Dante from her: he looks for the sequel: she thinks he looks severely: she says: ‘Galeotto is the name of the book,’ fancying by this timorous little flight she has drawn him far enough from the nest of her young loves. No, the eagle beak of Dante and his piercing eyes are yet over her.
‘Galeotto is the name of the book.’
‘What matters that?’
‘And of the writer.’