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

restore us to our just rights. And when thou, successor of Caesar and of Augustus, crossing the chain of the Apennines, brought back the venerable Tarpeian ensigns, our long sighings straightway ceased, the fountains of our tears were stayed, and a new hope of a better age, like a sun suddenly risen, shed its beams over Latium. Then many, breaking forth into jubilant vows, sang with Mars the Saturnian reign, and the return of the Virgin.

“But since our sun (whether the fervor of desire suggests it, or the aspect of truth) is already believed to have delayed, or is supposed to be going back in his course, as if a new Joshua or the son of Amos had commanded, we are compelled in our uncertainty to doubt, and to break forth in the words of the Forerunner: ‘Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?’ And although the fury of long thirst turns into doubt, as is its wont, the things which are certain because they are near, nevertheless we believe and hope in thee, asserting thee to be the minister of God, and the son of the Church, and the promoter of the Roman glory. And I, who write as well for myself as for others, when my hands touched thy feet and my lips performed their office, saw thee most benignant, as becometh the Imperial majesty, and heard thee most clement. Then my spirit exulted within me, and I silently said to myself, ‘Behold the lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.’ ”

Dante, Paradiso XXX 133, sees the crown and throne that await the “noble Henry” in the highest heaven:⁠—

“On that great throne on which thine eyes are fixed
For the crown’s sake already placed upon it,
Before thou suppest at this wedding feast,
Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus
On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come
To reform Italy ere she be prepared.”

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Themis, the daughter of Coelus and Terra, whose oracle was famous in Attica, and who puzzled Deucalion and Pyrrha by telling them that, in order to repeople the earth after the deluge, they must throw “their mother’s bones behind them.”

The Sphinx, the famous monster born of Chimaera, and having the head of a woman, the wings of a bird, the body of a dog, and the paws of a lion; and whose riddle, “What animal walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at night?” so puzzled the Thebans, that King Creon offered his crown and his daughter Jocasta to any one who should solve it, and so free the land of the uncomfortable monster; a feat accomplished by Oedipus apparently without much difficulty. ↩

The Naiades having undertaken to solve the enigmas of oracles, Themis, offended, sent forth a wild beast to ravage the flocks and fields of the Thebans; though why they should have been held accountable for the doings of the Naiades is not very obvious. The tradition is founded on a passage in Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII 757:⁠—

“Carmina Naïades non intellecta priorum
Solvunt.”

Heinsius and other critics say that the lines should read,

“Carmina Laiades non intellecta priorum
Solverat”;

referring to Oedipus, son of Laius. But Rosa Moranda maintains the old reading, and says there is authority in Pausanias for making the Naiades interpreters of oracles. ↩

Coplas de Manrique:⁠—

“Our cradle is the starting place,
Life is the running of the race.”

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First by the Eagle, who rent its bark and leaves; then by the giant, who bore away the chariot which had been bound to it. ↩

The sin of Adam, and the death of Christ. ↩

Widening at the top, instead of diminishing upward like other trees. ↩

The Elsa is a river in Tuscany, rising in the mountains near Colle, and flowing northward into the Arno, between Florence and Pisa. Its waters have’ the power of incrusting or petrifying anything left in them. “This power of incrustation,” says Covino, Descriz. Geog. dell’ Italia, “is especially manifest a little above Colle, where a great pool rushes impetuously from the ground.” ↩

If the vain thoughts thou hast been immersed in had not petrified thee, and the pleasure of them stained thee; if thou hadst not been

“Converted into stone and stained with sin.”

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The staff wreathed with palm, the cockleshell in the hat, and the sandal-shoon were all marks of the pilgrim, showing he had been beyond sea and in the Holy Land. Thus in the old ballad of “The Friar of Orders Gray”:⁠—

“And how should I your truelove know
From many another one?
O by his cockle-hat and staff,
And by his sandal-shoone.”

In the Vita Nuova, Mr. Norton’s Tr., p. 71, is this passage:⁠—

“Moreover, it is to be known that the people who travel in the service of the Most High are called by three distinct terms. Those who go beyond the sea, whence often they bring back the palm, are called palmers. Those who go to the house of Galicia are called pilgrims, because the burial-place of St. James was more distant from his country than that of any other of the Apostles. And those are called romei who go to Rome.”

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How far Philosophy differs from Religion. Isaiah 4:8:⁠—

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

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Noon of the Fourth Day of Purgatory. ↩

Two of the four rivers that watered Paradise. Here they are the same as Lethe and Eunoë, the oblivion of evil, and the memory