Guido Cavalcanti. “Sonnet. Of the Eyes of a certain Mandetta, of Thoulouse, which resemble those of his Lady Joan of Florence.”

The poem is an important text illustrating the Neo-Platonic idea of the unity of all forms of love—an idea as central to the early Italian tradition as to DGR's work. Cavalcanti's sonnet was written sometime in the late 1280s when he was on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

DGR varies the rhyme scheme somewhat but stays quite close to the sense of the original Italian. His source text was Cicciaporci (Sonnet XII, page 7).

Probably early, late 1840s.

The translation was first published in 1861 in The Early Italian Poets; it was reprinted in 1874 in Dante and his Circle.