Per Non S’Avere A Ripigliar Da Tanti

That perfectness of beauty free from peer Might be reclaimed and garnered without fail, Upon a lady excellently clear Was it bestowed beneath a shining veil; The heavenly boon had hardly been repaid, If scattered among all that Heaven had made. Now, from world unaware, In breathing of a sigh, Hath God who reigns on high Resumed, and hid away his beauty fair. Yet, though the body die, Cherish shall memory still Sacred and sweet, her written legacy. Compassionate and stern, if Heaven’s will To all had granted what to her alone, We all had died for making good the loan.

The madrigal recites that deity had chosen to embody in a single life the sum of beauty, to the end that the celestial gift might be more easily resumed. Similar concetti are to be found in the series of epitaphs composed on Cecchino Bracci, in 1544. Mr. Symonds very unjustly criticises the verse as constrained, affected, and exhibiting an absence of genuine grief.