Dante Alighieri. “Ballata. He will gaze upon Beatrice.”

Although DGR's source text, Fraticelli's Opere Minori di Dante Alighieri (I. 105), attributes the poem to Dante, scholars now agree it is actually by Cino da Pistoia. DGR's translation is a superb tour de force in rendering the complex metrical form of the original ballata. DGR associates the poem, understandably enough, with the poetical group of texts by Dante that relate to the Vita Nuova: see commentary for “To certain Ladies; when Beatrice was lamenting her Father's Death”.

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.