Page:Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti.djvu/20

 In the matter of these translations and of my knowledge of Tuscan poetry, Rossetti is my father and my mother, but one man cannot be expected to see everything at once.

The twelfth ballata, being psychological and not metaphysical, need hardly be explained. Exhausted by a love born of fate and of the emotions, Guido turns to an intellectual sympathy,

and in this new force he is remade

yet with some inexplicable lack. His sophistication prevents the complete enthusiasm. This “new person” which is formed about his soul

knowing “The end of every man’s desire.”

The facts of Guido’s life, as we know them from other evidence than that of his own and his friends’ poems, are about as follows:–Born 1250 (circa), his mother probably of the Conti Guidi. In 1266 or 1267 “Cavalcante de Cavalcanti gave for wife to his son Guido one of the Uberti,” i. e. the daughter of Farinata. Thus Villani. Some speak of this as a “betrothal.” In 1280 he acted as one of the sureties of the peace arranged by Cardinal Latino. We may set 1283 as the date of the reply to Dante’s