In the following poem Guido Cavalcanti treats this subject in Very much the same way that Dante docs; and it is curious to observe how at particular times certain ideas seem to float in the air, and to become the property of every one who chooses to make use of them. From the similarity between this poem and the lines of Dante, one might infer that the two friends had discussed the matter in conversation, and afterwards that each had written out their common thought.

Cavalcanti’s “Song of Fortune,” as translated by Rossetti, Early Italian Poets , p. 366, runs as follows:⁠—