The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (essential books to read TXT) 📕

Without an heir for ever shall not be That eagle, he, who left the chariot plum’d, Which monster made it first and next a prey.

Plainly I view, and therefore speak, the stars E’en now approaching, whose conjunction, free From all impediment and bar, brings on A season, in the which, one sent from God, (Five hundred, five, and ten, do mark him out) That foul one, and th’ accomplice of her guilt, The giant, both shall slay. And if perchance My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils The intellect with blindness) yet ere long Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve This knotty riddle, and no damage light On flock or field. Take heed; and as these words By me are utter’d, teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ’st them, keep in mind Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice hath now been spoil’d. This whoso robs, This whoso plucks, with blasphemy of deed Sins against God, who for his use alone Creating hallow’d it. For taste of this, In pain and in desire, five thousand years And upward, the first soul did yearn for him, Who punish’d in himself the fatal gust.

“Thy reason slumbers, if it deem this height And summit thus inverted of the plant, Without due cause: and were not vainer thoughts, As Elsa’s numbing waters, to thy soul, And their fond pleasures had not dyed it dark As Pyramus the mulberry, thou hadst seen, In such momentous circumstance alone, God’s equal justice morally implied In the forbidden tree. But since I mark thee In understanding harden’d into stone, And, to that hardness, spotted too and stain’d, So that thine eye is dazzled at my word, I will, that, if not written, yet at least Painted thou take it in thee, for the cause, That one brings home his staff inwreath’d with palm.

“I thus: “As wax by seal, that changeth not Its impress, now is stamp’d my brain by thee.

But wherefore soars thy wish’d-for speech so high Beyond my sight, that loses it the more, The more it strains to reach it?” —“To the end That thou mayst know,” she answer’d straight, “the school, That thou hast follow’d; and how far behind, When following my discourse, its learning halts: And mayst behold your art, from the divine As distant, as the disagreement is ‘Twixt earth and heaven’s most high and rapturous orb.”

“I not remember,” I replied, “that e’er I was estrang’d from thee, nor for such fault Doth conscience chide me.” Smiling she return’d: “If thou canst, not remember, call to mind How lately thou hast drunk of Lethe’s wave; And, sure as smoke doth indicate a flame, In that forgetfulness itself conclude Blame from thy alienated will incurr’d.

From henceforth verily my words shall be As naked as will suit them to appear In thy unpractis’d view.” More sparkling now, And with retarded course the sun possess’d The circle of mid-day, that varies still As th’ aspect varies of each several clime, When, as one, sent in vaward of a troop For escort, pauses, if perchance he spy Vestige of somewhat strange and rare: so paus’d The sev’nfold band, arriving at the verge Of a dun umbrage hoar, such as is seen, Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches, oft To overbrow a bleak and alpine cliff.

And, where they stood, before them, as it seem’d, Tigris and Euphrates both beheld,

Forth from one fountain issue; and, like friends, Linger at parting. “O enlight’ning beam!

O glory of our kind! beseech thee say What water this, which from one source deriv’d Itself removes to distance from itself?”

To such entreaty answer thus was made: “Entreat Matilda, that she teach thee this.”

And here, as one, who clears himself of blame Imputed, the fair dame return’d: “Of me He this and more hath learnt; and I am safe That Lethe’s water hath not hid it from him.”

And Beatrice: “Some more pressing care That oft the memory ‘reeves, perchance hath made His mind’s eye dark. But lo! where Eunoe cows!

Lead thither; and, as thou art wont, revive His fainting virtue.” As a courteous spirit, That proffers no excuses, but as soon As he hath token of another’s will, Makes it his own; when she had ta’en me, thus The lovely maiden mov’d her on, and call’d To Statius with an air most lady-like: “Come thou with him.” Were further space allow’d, Then, Reader, might I sing, though but in part, That beverage, with whose sweetness I had ne’er Been sated. But, since all the leaves are full, Appointed for this second strain, mine art With warning bridle checks me. I return’d From the most holy wave, regenerate, If ‘en as new plants renew’d with foliage new, Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars.

NOTES TO PURGATORY

CANTO I

Verse 1. O’er better waves.] Berni, Orl. Inn. L 2. c. i.

Per correr maggior acqua alza le vele, O debil navicella del mio ingegno.

v. 11. Birds of chattering note.] For the fable of the daughters of Pierus, who challenged the muses to sing, and were by them

changed into magpies, see Ovid, Met. 1. v. fab. 5.

v. 19. Planet.] Venus.

v. 20. Made all the orient laugh.] Hence Chaucer, Knight’s Tale: And all the orisont laugheth of the sight.

It is sometimes read “orient.”

v. 24. Four stars.] Symbolical of the four cardinal virtues, Prudence Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. See Canto XXXI v.

105.

v. 30. The wain.] Charles’s wain, or Bootes.

v. 31. An old man.] Cato.

v. 92. Venerable plumes.] The same metaphor has occurred in Hell Canto XX. v. 41:

—the plumes,

That mark’d the better sex.

It is used by Ford in the Lady’s Trial, a. 4. s. 2.

Now the down

Of softness is exchang’d for plumes of age.

v. 58. The farthest gloom.] L’ultima sera. Ariosto, Oroando Furioso c. xxxiv st. 59:

Che non hen visto ancor l’ultima sera.

And Filicaja, c. ix. Al Sonno.

L’ultima sera.

v. 79. Marcia.]

Da fredera prisci

Illibata tori: da tantum nomen inane Connubil: liceat tumulo scripsisse, Catonis Martia

Lucan, Phars. 1. ii. 344.

v. 110. I spy’d the trembling of the ocean stream.]

Connubil il tremolar della marina.

Trissino, in the Sofonisba.]

E resta in tremolar l’onda marina

And Fortiguerra, Rleelardetto, c. ix. st. 17.

—visto il tremolar della marine.

v. 135. another.] From Virg, Aen. 1. vi. 143.

Primo avulso non deficit alter

CANTO II

v. 1. Now had the sun.] Dante was now antipodal to Jerusalem, so that while the sun was setting with respect to that place which he supposes to be the middle of the inhabited earth, to him it was rising.

v. 6. The scales.] The constellation Libra.

v. 35. Winnowing the air.]

Trattando l’acre con l’eterne penne.

80 Filicaja, canz. viii. st. 11.

Ma trattar l’acre coll’ eterne plume v. 45. In exitu.] “When Israel came out of Egypt.” Ps. cxiv.

v. 75. Thrice my hands.]

Ter conatus ibi eollo dare brachia eircum, Ter frustra eomprensa manus effugit imago, Par levibus ventis voluerique simillima sommo.

Virg. Aen. ii. 794.

Compare Homer, Od. xl. 205.

v. 88. My Casella.] A Florentine, celebrated for his skill in music, “in whose company,” says Landine, “Dante often recreated his spirits wearied by severe studies.” See Dr. Burney’s History of Music, vol. ii. c. iv. p. 322. Milton has a fine allusion to this meeting in his sonnet to Henry Lawes.

v. 90. Hath so much time been lost.] Casella had been dead some years but was only just arrived.

v. 91. He.] The eonducting angel.

v. 94. These three months past.] Since the time of the Jubilee, during which all spirits not condemned to eternal punishment, were supposed to pass over to Purgatory as soon as they pleased.

v. 96. The shore.] Ostia.

v. 170. “Love that discourses in my thoughts.”]

“Amor che nella mente mi ragiona.”

The first verse of a eanzone or song in the Convito of Dante, which he again cites in his Treatise de Vulg. Eloq. 1. ii. c.

vi.

CANTO III

v. 9. How doth a little failing wound thee sore.]

(Ch’era al cor picciol fallo amaro morso.

Tasso, G. L. c. x. st. 59.

v. 11. Haste, that mars all decency of act. Aristotle in his Physiog iii. reekons it among the “the signs of an impudent man,” that he is “quick in his motions.” Compare Sophoeles, Electra, 878.

v. 26. To Naples.]

Virgil died at Brundusium, from whence his body is said to have been removed to Naples.

v. 38. Desiring fruitlessly.] See H. Canto IV, 39.

v. 49. ‘Twixt Lerice and Turbia.] At that time the two extremities of the Genoese republic, the former on the east, the latter on the west. A very ingenious writer has had occasion, for a different purpose, to mention one of these places as remarkably secluded by its mountainous situation “On an eminence among the mountains, between the two little cities, Nice and Manoca, is the village of Torbia, a name formed from the Greek [GREEK HERE] Mitford on the Harmony of Language, sect. x. p. 351.

2d edit.

v. 78. As sheep.] The imitative nature of these animals supplies our Poet with another comparison in his Convito Opere, t. i. p 34. Ediz. Ven. 1793.

v. 110. Manfredi. King of Naples and Sicily, and the natural son of Frederick II. He was lively end agreeable in his manners, and delighted in poetry, music, and dancing. But he was luxurious and ambitious. Void of religion, and in his philosophy an Epicurean. See G. Villani l. vi. c. xlvii. and Mr. Matthias’s Tiraboschi, v. I. p. 38. He fell in the battle with Charles of Anjou in 1265, alluded to in Canto XXVIII, of Hell, v. 13, “Dying, excommunicated, King Charles did allow of his being buried in sacred ground, but he was interred near the bridge of Benevento, and on his grave there was cast a stone by every one of the army whence there was formed a great mound of stones. But some ave said, that afterwards, by command of the Pope. the Bishop of Cosenza took up his body and sent it out of the kingdom, because it was the land of the church, and that it was buried by the river Verde, on the borders of the kingdom and of Carapagna. this, however, we do not affirm.” G. Villani, Hist.

l. vii. c. 9.

v. 111. Costanza.] See Paradise Canto III. v. 121.

v. 112. My fair daughter.] Costanza, the daughter of Manfredi, and wife of Peter III. King of Arragon, by whom she was mother to Frederick, King of Sicily and James, King