THE PROPHECY OF DANTE.*

CANTO I.

ONCE more in man's frail world! which I had left
So long that 't was forgotten; and I feel
The weight of clay again,-too soon berest
Of the immortal vision which could heal

My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies
Lift me from that deep gulf without repeal,
Where late my ears rung with the damned cries
Of souls in hopeless bale! and from that place
Of lesser torment, whence men may arise
Pure from the fire to join the angelic race;
'Midst whom my own bright Beatrice bless'd'
My spirit with her light; and to the base
Of the Eternal Triad! first, last, best,
Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God!
Soul universal! led the mortal guest,
Unblasted by the glory, though he trod

From star to star to reach the almighty throne.
Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod
So long hath press'd, and the cold marble stone,
Thou sole pure seraph of my earliest love,
Love so ineffable, and so alone,

That nought on earth could more my bosom move,

And meeting thee in heaven was but to meet

That without which my soul, like the arkless dove,

Had wander'd still in search of, nor her feet

"There were in this poem, originally, three lines of remarkable strength and severity, which, as the Italian poet against whom they were directed was then living, were omitted in the publication. I shall here give them from memory:

The prostitution of his muse and wife,
Both beautiful, and both by him debased,
Shall salt his bread, and give him means of life.

MOORE, Life.

Relieved her wing till found; without thy light My paradise had still been incomplete. ' Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight Thou wert my life, the essence of my thought, Loved ere I knew the name of love, and bright Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought With the world's war, and years, and banishment, And tears for thee, by other woes untaught: For mine is not a nature to be bent

eye

By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd; And though the long, long conflict hath been spent In vain, and never more, save when the cloud Which overhangs the Apennine, my mind's Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud Of me, can I return, though but to die, Unto my native soil, they have not yet Quench'd the old exile's spirit, stern and high. But the sun, though not overcast, must set, And the night cometh; I am old in days, And deeds, and contemplation, and have met Destruction face to face in all his ways.

e-pure;

The world hath left me, what it found me-
And if I have not gather'd yet its praise,

I sought it not by any baser lure.

Man wrongs, and Time avenges; and

my name

May form a monument not all obscure,
Though such was not my ambition's end or aim,
To add to the vain glorious list of those
Who dabble in the pettiness of fame,

And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows
Their sail, and deem it glory to be class'd
With conquerors, and virtue's other foes,

In bloody chronicles of ages past.

I would have had my Florence great and free:5
Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast
Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He
Wept over," but thou wouldst not."
Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee
Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard

As the bird

My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherish'd thee was stirr'd Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce, And doom this body forfeit to the fire. Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who for that country would expire! But did not merit to expire by her,

And loves her, loves her even in her ire.

The day may come when she will cease to err,

The day may come she would be proud to have

The dust she dooms to scatter," and transfer
Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave.
But this shall not be granted; let my dust
Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave
Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust

Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassume
My indignant bones, because her angry gust
Forsooth is over, and repeal'd her doom.

No, she denied me what was mine-my roof, And shall not have what is not hers-my tomb. Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof

The breast which would have bled for her, the heart That beat, the mind that was temptation-proof, The man who fought, toil'd, travell'd, and each part Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw

For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art Pass his destruction even into a law.

These things are not made for forgetfulnessFlorence shall be forgotten first; too raw The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress Of such endurance too prolong'd, to make My pardon greater, her injustice less, Though late repented: yet-yet for her sake I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine, My own Beatrice, I would hardly take Vengeance upon the land which once was mine, And still is hallow'd by thy dust's return, Which would protect the murderess like a shrine, And save thousand foes by thy sole urn. Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's marsh And Carthage' ruins, my lone breast may burn At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,

And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe Writhe in a dream before me, and o'er-arch My brow with hopes of triumph,-let them go! Such are the last infirmities of those

Who long have suffer'd more than mortal woe,
And yet, being mortal still, have no repose
But on the pillow of Revenge-Revenge,
Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows
With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change,
When we shall mount again, and they that trod
Be trampled on, while Death and Até range
O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks.-Great God!
Take these thoughts from me-to thy hands I yield
My many wrongs, and thine almighty rod

Will fall on those who smote me,-be my shield!
As thou hast been in peril, and in pain,
In turbulent cities, and the tented field-

In toil, and many troubles borne in vain

For Florence.-I appeal from her to Thee!
Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign,
Even in that glorious vision, which to see
And live was never granted until now,
And yet thou hast permitted this to me.
Alas! with what a weight upon my brow
The sense of earth and earthly things comes back,
Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,
The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,
Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect
Of half a century bloody and black,
And the frail few years I may yet expect

Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear;
For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd

On the lone rock of desolate despair

To lift my eyes more to the passing sail
Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;

Nor raise my voice-for who would heed my wail?
I am not of this people, nor this age;
And yet my harpings will unfold a tale
Which shall preserve these times, when not a page
Of their perturbed annals could attract
An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,
Did not my verse embalm full many an act
Worthless as they who wrought it: 't is the doom
Of spirits of my order to be rack'd

In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him-who now is but a name,
And, wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his-by him unheard, unheeded-fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus-to tame
My mind down from its own infinity-

To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,

A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,

Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things
That make communion sweet, and soften pain-

To feel me in the solitude of kings,

Without the power that makes them bear a crown-
To envy every dove his nest and wings

Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be,
Within my all-inexorable town,
Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,

Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry-this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:

I have not vilely found, nor basely sought-
They made an exile-not a slave of me.

CANTO II.

THE spirit of the fervent days of old,

When words were things that came to pass, and thought
Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold

Their children's children's doom already brought
Forth from the abyss of time which is to be;
The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great seers of Israel wore within,
That spirit was on them, and is on me :
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed, This voice from out the wilderness, the sin Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, The only guerdon I have ever known.

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,

Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown

With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget

In thine irreparable wrongs my own.

We can have but one country, and even yet

Thou 'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,

My soul within thy language, which once set

With our old Roman sway in the wide west;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which exprest
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme,
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realise a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song; So that all present speech to thine shall seem The note of meaner birds, and every tongue

Confess its barbarism when compared with thine. This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan bard, the banish'd Ghibelline.