Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)

Translated by Henry Francis Cary
(Sent with the Vita Nuova)

MASTER BRUNETTO, this I send entreating

Ye’ll entertain this lass of mine at Easter;

She does not come among you as a feaster;

No: she has need of reading, not of eating.

Nor let her find you at some merry meeting,

Laughing amidst buffoons and drollers, lest her

Wise sentence should escape a noisy jester;

She must be wooed, and is well worth the weeting.

If in this sort you fail to make her out,

You have amongst you many sapient men,

All famous as was Albert of Cologne.

I have been posed amid that learned rout,

And if they cannot spell her right, why then

Call Master Giano, and the deed is done.