 Guido’s influence on Dante was profound. But the Vita nuova, an anthology of Dante’s early poetry interspersed with a narrative combining commentary on his poetic development with the history of his devotion to Beatrice during her earthly life, reveals a growing realization that his own conception of poetry and love differ fundamentally from Guido’s [Ardizzone (2011); Barolini (1998), esp. pp. 60–63]. Like Guido, Dante accepted love as being, for better or worse, fundamental to the noble life, and his early lyrics express a sense like Guido’s of the internally divisive power of desire. But as the Vita nuova unfolds there is a gradual shift of focus: having failed to win his lady’s favor by dramatizing his own sufferings, Dante resolves to devote his poetry henceforth wholly to praise of her [VN, 18.9]. The result of this new resolve is a canzone, “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore” (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”), which returns to the source of his inspiration and Guido’s in the poetry of Guinizelli, but makes a wholly new departure. For Guido, the “heavenly” allure of the lady is a deception perpetrated by the senses, all the more dangerous as the lover’s gentilezza responds more fully to the attraction of her beauty and subjects itself to the “fierce accident” of passion. Dante, too, sees that the experience his early, tormented lyrics depict is “an accident occurring in a substance” [VN 25.1–2], but the “fiery spirits of love” which strike the eyes of those on whom his lady bestows her greeting are not just goads to desire (Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore, VN 19.10.37–40):