17 Often when thinking of these things, St. Francis used to break down and shed bitter tears. Who would not be moved at this spectacle of a man who was so much in love with poverty that he appeared to his former boon companions and, to many others besides, bereft of his senses? What are we to say then of the generations following him which, even if they are very far from an understanding and practice of evangelical perfection, yet are filled with admiration for so ardent a lover of poverty, an admiration that is continually on the increase and which is particualarly noteworthy in the men of our own day? Dante anticipated this admiration of posterity in his poem "The Nuptials of St. Francis and Poverty," in which poem one finds it difficult which to admire more, the remarkable sublimity of the ideas expressed or the beauty and elegance of the style. ( Paradiso , Canto XI.)
Source: Rite Expiatis (Vatican.va)