Dante to Moroello Malaspina (circa 1307-1308)

Lest the chains of his servant b hidden t the lord as, t, the gratitude in his dominant
affection and lest other tles about other things that are more ofen the seedbeds of false
opinions accuse [him] of being negligently held up, it pleases him to send this report of a
vision for the perusal of your Magnifcence.
Having been separated afterwards from the longed for threshold of the buildings in
which you saw me with admiration on your part performing occupations voluntarily just
as ofen as was allowed, I had hardly placed my feet securely and unwarily by the Amo
River, when suddenly, behold a woman or lighting bolt descending appeared fom I do
not know where, conforming in her ways and beauty in every respect to w 1 had been
imagining.
0 how I lost my speech with her appearance: but stupor at te following thunderclap
ceased with terror. For just as thunderclaps are followed there by lighting bolts in the
daytime, so, too, the flame of her beauty having been examined, love terrible and
imperious held me.
And this ferocious [love], like a lord expelled fm his homeland afer a long exile
retung to his own [homeland], killed or expelled or bound whatever there was contrary
[to him] in me. He killed therefore that praiseworthy resolution by which I abstained
from poems about his women, and he impiously put aside the assiduous meditations,
suspicious as it were [to him], by which both celestial and terrestrial matters were
contemplated by me, and fmally, lest the soul rebel frther against him, he bound my free
judgment (free will), that not what I wanted but what he wanted I was bound to do. Love
therefore rules in me unopposed by viue, and as you inquire, [how] he rules me
[follows] afer this page .
.