how short a time the fire of love endures in woman if frequent sight and touch do not rekindle it. - Dante Alighieri

You must take a different route
if you expect to escape this wilderness, because the beast that makes you cry for help
lets none pass on her path, but cuts him off95 at every step until at last it kills him; and her nature is so wicked and perverse
that her voracity is never sated,
for feeding only whets her appetite. Many she’s mated with among the living100 and will with many more, until the greyhound
arrives to make her die a painful death.

Dolce color d’oriental zaffiro,
che s’accoglieva nel sereno aspetto
del mezzo, puro infino al primo giro,

a li occhi miei ricominciò diletto,
tosto ch’io usci’ fuor de l’aura morta
che m’avea contristati li occhi e ‘l petto.

one of the biggest, most varied and most accomplished poems in all the world. Appreciated on the level of its verse, the thing never stops getting steadily more beautiful as it goes on.