Analysis of Love and the Gentle Heart

Dante Alighieri 1265 (Florence) – 1321 (Ravenna)



Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.

Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.

Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,

Till love, at last, out of its dreaming starts.
Woman’s moved likewise by a virtuous man.


Scheme AXXA ABBA XXXX XX
Poetic Form
Metre 100101111 110101011 1101011101 110101100 1011010111 0101010111 0101010101 1010010100 1100010011 10110101 11010101101 0101011101 1111111101 111101001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 593
Words 105
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 2
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 114
Words per stanza (avg) 26
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

31 sec read
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Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, simply referred to as Dante, was a major Italian poet of the Middle Ages. more…

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