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

formless heap remains alone.”

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Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV, Eusden’s Tr.:⁠—

“ ‘Come, my Harmonia, come, thy face recline
Down to my face: still touch what still is mine.
O let these hands, while hands, be gently pressed,
While yet the serpent has not all possessed.’
More he had spoke, but strove to speak in vain⁠—
The forky tongue refused to tell his pain,
And learned in hissings only to complain.
“Then shrieked Harmonia, ‘Stay, my Cadmus, stay!
Glide not in such a monstrous shape away!
Destruction, like impetuous waves, rolls on.
Where are thy feet, thy legs, thy shoulders, gone?
Changed is thy visage, changed is all thy frame⁠—
Cadmus is only Cadmus now in name.
Ye Gods! my Cadmus to himself restore.
Or me like him transform⁠—I ask no more.’ ”

And V, Maynwaring’s Tr.:⁠—

“The God so near, a chilly sweat possessed
My fainting limbs, at every pore expressed;
My strength distilled in drops, my hair in dew,
My form was changed, and all my substance new:
Each motion was a stream, and my whole frame
Turned to a fount, which still preserves my name.”

See also Shelley’s “Arethusa”:⁠—

“Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains⁠—
From cloud and from crag
With many a jag
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing,
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep.
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.”

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Some editions read la penna, the pen, instead of la lingua, the tongue. ↩

Gaville was a village in the Valdarno, where Guercio Cavalcanti was murdered. The family took vengeance upon the inhabitants in the old Italian style, thus causing Gaville to lament the murder. ↩

The Eighth Bolgia, in which Fraudulent Counsellors are punished. ↩

Of these five Florentine nobles, Cianfa Donati, Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, and Guercio Cavalcanti, nothing is known but what Dante tells us. Perhaps that is enough. ↩

See Purgatorio IX 13:⁠—

“Just at the hour when her sad lay begins
The little swallow, near unto the morning,
Perchance in memory of her former woes.
And when the mind of man, a wanderer
More from the flesh, and less by thought imprisoned,
Almost prophetic in its visions is.”

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The disasters soon to befall Florence, and in which even the neighboring town of Prato would rejoice, to mention no others. These disasters were the fall of the wooden bridge of Carraia, with a crowd upon it, witnessing a Miracle Play on the Arno; the strife of the Bianchi and Neri; and the great fire of 1304. See Villani, VIII 70, 71. Napier, Florentine History, I 394, gives this account:⁠—

“Battles first began between the Cerchi and Giugni at their houses in the Via del Garbo; they fought day and night, and with the aid of the Cavalcanti and Antellesi the former subdued all that quarter: a thousand rural adherents strengthened their bands, and that day might have seen the Neri’s destruction if an unforseen disaster had not turned the scale. A certain dissolute priest, called Neri Abati, prior of San Piero Scheraggio, false to his family and in concert with the Black chiefs, consented to set fire to the dwellings of his own kinsmen in Orto-san-Michele; the flames, assisted by faction, spread rapidly over the richest and most crowded part of Florence: shops, warehouses, towers, private dwellings and palaces, from the old to the new marketplace, from Vacchereccia to Porta Santa Maria and the Ponte Vecchio, all was one broad sheet of fire: more than nineteen hundred houses were consumed; plunder and devastation revelled unchecked amongst the flames, whole races were reduced in one moment to beggary, and vast magazines of the richest merchandise were destroyed. The Cavalcanti, one of the most opulent families in Florence, beheld their whole property consumed, and lost all courage; they made no attempt to save it, and, after almost gaining possession of the city, were finally overcome by the opposite faction.”

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Macbeth, 1.7:⁠—

“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly.”

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See Paradiso XII 112:⁠—

“O glorious stars! O light impregnated
With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge
All of my genius, whatsoe’er it be.”

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I may not balk or deprive myself of this good. ↩

The Prophet Elisha, 2 Kings 2:23:⁠—

“And he went up from thence unto Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him. Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord: and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.”

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2 Kings 2:11:⁠—

“And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.”

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These two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, were so hostile to each other, that, when after death their bodies were burned on the same funeral pile, the flames swayed apart, and the ashes separated. Statius, Thebaid, XII 430, Lewis’s Tr.:⁠—

“Again behold the brothers! When the fire
Pervades their limbs in many a curling spire,
The vast hill trembles, and the intruder’s corse
Is driven from the pile with sudden force.
The flames, dividing at the point, ascend,
And at each other adverse rays extend.
Thus when the ruler of the infernal state,
Pale-visaged Dis, commits to stern debate
The sister-fiends, their brands, held forth to fight,
Now clash, then part, and shed