“I come to thee by daytime constantly, But in thy thoughts too much of baseness find: Greatly it grieves me for thy gentle mind, And for thy many virtues gone from thee. It was thy wont to shun much company, Unto all sorry concourse ill inclined: And still thy speech of me, heartfelt and kind, Had made me treasure up thy poetry. But now I dare not, for thine abject life, Make manifest that I approve thy rhymes; Nor come I in such sort that thou may’st know. Ah! prithee read this sonnet many times: So shall that evil one who bred this strife Be thrust from thy dishonored soul, and go.”

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In this canto Dante, having made confession of his sins, is drawn by Matilda through the river Lethe. ↩