O pilgrims who go thinking,

perhaps of things not present,

do you come from so far a place,

as your faces demonstrate,

that you do not weep when you pass

through the centre of the grieving city,

like those people who do not know

any part of its heavy sorrow?

If you will stay to hear my wish,

surely my heart of sighs tells me

that you will then travel weeping.

It has lost its blessed Beatrice:

and the words a man can say of her

have the power to make others weep. (‘The New Life’ of Dante Alighieri)