What touches you is, that when your own beloved young prince shall come to read these poems (and when you wish him a princely nature, you wish, sire, that such things should move him), he may exult to recall that his imperial father was great enough to overcome this great poet with magnanimity.
Ah, sire, you are great enough! You can allow for the peculiarity of the poetical temperament, for the temptations of high gifts, for the fever in which poets are apt to rage and suffer beyond the measure of other men.

You can consider that when they hate most causelessly there is a divine love in them somewhere; and that when they see most falsely they are loyal to some ideal light.

Forgive this enemy, this accuser, this traducer.

Disprove him by your generosity.

Let no tear of an admirer of his poetry drop upon your purple.