Dante Alighieri. “Sonnet. To certain Ladies; when Beatrice was lamenting her Father's Death.”

This is one of a group of Dante's poems that DGR translates because of their relation to the Vita Nuova (see DGR's note to the sonnet preceding this one in his 1861 collection). This sonnet and the following one are alternate (perhaps earlier?) versions of the pair of sonnets Dante included in Section XX of the Vita Nuova: “You that thus wear a modest countenance” and “Canst thou indeed be he that still wouldst sing”.

The source text for DGR's translation was Fraticelli, Opere Minori di Dante Alighieri (I. 142-143).

Probably an early translation, late 1840s.

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