The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

who do not; and they call it corona, because, all the rest of the head being shaven, a single circle of hair should be left, which in form of a crown surrounds the whole head.”

↩

In like manner Chaucer, “Persones Tale,” pp. 227, 337, reproves ill-keeping and ill-giving:⁠—

“Avarice, after the description of Seint Augustine, is a likerousnesse in herte to have erthly thinges. Som other folk sayn, that avarice is for to purchase many erthly thinges, and nothing to yeve to hem that han nede. And understond wel, that avarice standeth not only in land ne catel, but som time in science and in glorie, and in every maner outrageous thing is avarice.⁠ ⁠…

“But for as moche as som folk ben unmesurable, men oughten for to avoid and eschue fool-largesse, the whiche men clepen waste. Certes, he that is fool-large, he yeveth not his catel, but he leseth his catel, Sothly, what thing that he yeveth for vaine-glory, as to minstrals, and to folk that here his renome in the world, he hath do sinne thereof, and non almesse: certes, he leseth foule his good, that ne seketh with the yefte of his good nothing but sinne. He is like to an hors that seketh rather to drink drovy or troubled water, than for to drink water of the clere well. And for as moche as they yeven thcr as they shuld nat yeven, to hem apperteineth thilkc malison, that Crist shal yeve at the day of dome to hem that shul be dampned.”

↩

The Wheel of Fortune was one of the favorite subjects of art and song in the Middle Ages. On a large square of white marble set in the pavement of the nave of the Cathedral at Siena, is the representation of a revolving wheel. Three boys are climbing and clinging at the sides and below; above is a dignified figure with a stern countenance, holding the sceptre and ball. At the four corners are inscriptions from Seneca, Euripides, Aristotle, and Epictetus. The same symbol may be seen also in the wheel-of-fortune windows of many churches; as, for example, that of San Zcno at Verona. See Knight, Ecclesiastical Architecture, II plates V, VI.

In the following poem Guido Cavalcanti treats this subject in Very much the same way that Dante docs; and it is curious to observe how at particular times certain ideas seem to float in the air, and to become the property of every one who chooses to make use of them. From the similarity between this poem and the lines of Dante, one might infer that the two friends had discussed the matter in conversation, and afterwards that each had written out their common thought.

Cavalcanti’s “Song of Fortune,” as translated by Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, p. 366, runs as follows:⁠—

“Lo! I am she who makes the wheel to turn;
Lo! I am she who gives and takes away;
Blamed idly, day by day,
In all mine acts by you, ye humankind.
For whoso smites his visage and doth mourn,
What time he renders back my gifts to me.
Learns then that I decree
No state which mine own arrows may not find.
Who clomb must fall:⁠—this bear ye well in mind,
Nor say, because he fell, I did him wrong.
Yet mine is a vain song:
For truly ye may find out wisdom when
King Arthur’s resting-place is found of men.

“Ye make great marvel and astonishment
What time ye see the sluggard lifted up
And the just man to drop.
And ye complain on God and on my sway.
O humankind, ye sin in your complaint:
For He, that Lord who made the world to live.
Lets me not take or give
By mine own act, but as he wills I may.
Yet is the mind of man so castaway,
That it discerns not the supreme behest.
Alas! ye wretchedest,
And chide ye at God also? Shall not He
Judge between good and evil righteously?

“Ah! had ye knowledge how God evermore.
With agonies of soul and grievous heats,
As on an anvil beats
On them that in this earth hold high estate⁠—
Ye would choose little rather than much store,
And solitude than spacious palaces;
Such is the sore disease
Of anguish that on all their days doth wait.
Behold if they be not unfortunate,
When oft the father dares not trust the son!
O wealth, with thee is won
A worm to gnaw forever on his soul
Whose abject life is laid in thy control!

“If also ye take note what piteous death
They ofttimes make, whose hoards were manifold,
Who cities had and gold
And multitudes of men beneath their hand;
Then he among you that most angereth
Shall bless me saying, ‘Lo! I worship thee
That I was not as he
Whose death is thus accurst throughout the land.’
But now your living souls are held in band
Of avarice, shutting you from the true light
Which shows how sad and slight
Are this world’s treasured riches and array
That still change hands a hundred times a day.

“For me⁠—could envy enter in my sphere,
Which of all human taint is clean and quit⁠—
I well might harbor it
When I behold the peasant at his toil.
Guiding his team, untroubled, free from fear,
He leaves his perfect furrow as he goes,
And gives his field repose
From thorns and tares and weeds that vex the soil:
Thereto he labors, and without turmoil
Entrusts his work to God, content if so
Such guerdon from it grow
That in that year his family shall live:
Nor care nor thought to other things will give.

“But now ye may no more have speech of me,
For this mine office craves continual use:
Ye therefore deeply muse
Upon those things which ye have heard the while:
Yea, and even yet remember heedfully
How this my wheel a motion hath so fieet.
That in an eyelid’s beat
Him whom it raised it maketh low and vile.
None was, nor is, nor shall be of such guile,
Who could, or can, or shall, I say, at length
Prevail against my strength.
But still those men that are my questioners
In bitter torment own their hearts perverse.

“Song, that wast made to carry high intent
Dissembled in the garb of humbleness⁠—
With fair and open face
To Master Thomas let thy course be bent.
Say