Often Love commanded me to go and look for the youngest of angels; so, during those early years I often went in search of her, and I found her to be of such natural dignity and worthy of such admiration that the words of Homer suited her perfectly: "She seemed to be the daughter, not of a mortal, but of a god."
– Dante’s Vita Nuova
translated by Mark Musa
Do you really think your soft approach
Could shake him that way
You who walk like the wind at dawn?
Oh yes you startled his heart
– Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by David Young
What loving rhythms, what passionate poems
Are worthy to honor her whose beauty
Wears its desire upon its forehead like a diadem?
– Renee Vivien
In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind.
I think of a girl
Who is not here.
– Hitomaro
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Now the Trojan leader found himself near her and knew
That the form he glimpsed through the shadows was hers
As early in the month one sees, or imagines he sees through
A wrack of cloud the new moon rising and glimmering
– The Aeneid of Virgil
translated by C. Day Lewis
A Leak In The Safe 