AND

HELL.

DANTE ALIGHIERI, the great medieval epic poet, and one of the greatest poets of all ages, was born in Florence, Italy, of an ancient family, May 14, 1265, and died at Ravenna, Sept. 14, 1321. Up to the age of twenty-five he lived in his native city engaged in study, associating with men of genius in art and letters His early life was clouded by the loss of Beatrice Portinari, a lady with whom his name will ever be associated. Like Milton, Dante took an earnest interest in the welfare of his country, and was for twelve years involved in the clash of political parties. At the age of thirty-seven he found himself condemned to perpetual exile, his property confiscated, and himself threatened with death at the stake should he enter the city of his birth. The last nineteen years of his life were spent in wanderings. In his "Vita Nuovo," Dante has given an account of his early life and romantic devotion to Beatrice, who is also enshrined in the "Divina Commedia," from which the following extracts are

taken.

The translation used is that by the REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY, said by the Edinburgh Review to have been executed "with a fidelity almost without example." Cary was born at Birmingham, England, in 1772. He graduated at Oxford and took orders in the Established Church. From 1826 to 1832 he was assistant librarian of the British Museum. He died in London, Aug. 14, 1844. His translation of Dante appeared from 1805 to 1814. The noteworthy version of the Divina Commedia " by Mr. Longfellow is the only complete translation by an American.

OFT have I seen, at some cathedral door,
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er :

Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,

And leave my burden at this minster gate, Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,

The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!

This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves

Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves

Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bow

ers,

And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!

But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled

eaves

Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,

And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, What exultations trampling on despair, What tenderness, what tears, what hate of

wrong,

What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediæval miracle of song!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

VIRGIL APPEARS.

The poet indicates the era of the poem by the fiction that, having in the thirty-fifth year of his life (A. D. 1300 lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, he is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterwards of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise.

IN the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell,
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

Yet, to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discovered there.
My ken discerned the form of one
Whose voice seemed faint through long dis-
use of speech.

When him in that great desert I espied,
"Have mercy on me," cried I out aloud,
"Spirit or living man! whate'er thou be."
He answered: "Now not man, man once
I was,

And born of Lombard parents, Mantuans both
By country, when the power of Julius yet
Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was
past,

Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time
Of fabled deities and false. A bard
Was I, and made Anchises' upright son
The subject of my song, who came from Troy,
When the flames preyed on Ilium's haughty

towers.

But thou, say wherefore to such perils past Return'st thou ? wherefore not this pleasant

mount

Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?" "And art thou then that Virgil, that well

spring,

From which such copious floods of eloquence
Have issued?" I with front abashed replied.
"Glory and light of all the tuneful train !
May it avail me, that I long with zeal
Have sought thy volume, and with love im-

mense

Have conned it o'er. My master thou, and

guide!

Thou he from whom alone I have derived That style, which for its beauty into fame Exalts me. See the beast from who i fled. Oh, save me from her, thou illustrious sage! For every vein and pulse throughout my frame She hath made tremble." He, soon as he

saw

That I was weeping, answered, "Thou must needs

Another way pursue, if thou wouldst 'scape From out that savage wilderness."

Canto i. lines 1-9, 58-90.

THE PILGRIMAGE PROPOSED.

I, FOR thy profit pondering, now devise
That thou mayst follow me; and I, thy guide,
Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,
Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks,
and see

Spirits of old tormented, who invoke

A second death; and those next view, who dwell

Content in fire, for that they hope to come,
Whene'er the time may be, among the blest,
Into whose regions if thou then desire
To ascend, a spirit worthier than I

Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart,

Thou shalt be left: for that Almighty King, Who reigns above, a rebel to his law Adjudges me; and therefore hath decreed That, to his city, none through me should

come.

He in all parts hath sway; there rules, there holds

His citadel and throne. Oh, happy those,
Whom there he chuses!" I to him in few :
"Bard! by that God, whom thou didst not
adore,

I do beseech thee (that this ill and worse
I may escape) to lead me where thou saidst,
That I Saint Peter's gate may view, and those
Who, as thou tell'st, are in such dismal plight."
Onward he moved, I close his steps pursued.

THE DIVINERS.

The poet having passed through Limbo and other circles of Hell, arrives at the place of torment of such as presumed, while living, to predict future events. They were to have their faces reversed and set the contrary way on their limbs, so that, being deprived of the power to see before them, they are constrained ever to walk backwards.

Now, reader! think within thyself, so God Fruit of thy reading give thee! how I long Could keep my visage dry, when I beheld Near me our form distorted in such guise, That on the hinder parts fallen from the face The tears down-streaming rolled. Against a rock

I leant and wept, so that my guide exclaimed : "What, and art thou, too, witless as the rest? Here pity most doth show herself alive, When she is dead. What guilt exceedeth his, Who with Heaven's judgment in his passion strives?"

LUCIFER DISCOVERED.

XX. 18-28.

In the fourth and last round of the ninth circle, those who have betrayed their benefactors are wholly covered with ice And in the midst is Lucifer, at the centre of gravity, at whose back Dante and Virgil ascend, till by a secret path they reach the surface of the other hemisphere of the earth, and once more obtain sight of the stars.

"THE banners of Hell's Monarch do come forth

Toward us; therefore look," so spake my guide,

"If thou discern him." As, when breathes a cloud

Heavy and dense, or when the shades of night Fall on our hemisphere, seems viewed from far A windmill, which the blast stirs briskly round; Such was the fabric then methought I saw.

To shield me from the wind, forthwith I drew

Behind my guide: no covert else was there.

Now came I (and with fear I bid my strain Record the marvel) where the souls were all Whelmed underneath, transparent, as through glass

Pellucid the frail stem. Some prone were laid; Others stood upright, this upon the soles, That on his head, a third with face to feet Arched like a bow. When to the point we

came,

Whereat my guide was pleased that I should

see

The creature eminent in beauty once, He from before me stepped and made me pause.

“Lo!” he exclaimed, "lo Dis; and lo the place,

Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength."

How frozen and how faint I then became,
Ask me not, reader! for I write it not;
Since words would fail to tell thee of my state.
I was not dead nor living. Think thyself,
If quick conception work in thee at all,
How I did feel. That emperor, who sways
The realm of sorrow, at mid breast from the ice
Stood forth; and I in stature am more like
A giant, than the giants are his arms.
Mark now how great that whole must be,
which suits

With such a part. If he were beautiful
As he is hideous now, and yet did dare
To scowl upon his Maker, well from him
May all our misery flow. Oh, what a sight!
How passing strange it seemed, when I did spy
Upon his head three faces: one in front
Of hue vermilion, the other two with this
Midway each shoulder joined and at the crest;
The right 'twixt wan and yellow seemed; the
left

To look on, such as come from whence old
Nile

Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth

Two mighty wings, enormous as became
A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw
Outstretched on the wide sea. No plumes
had they,

But were in texture like a bat; and these
He flapped i' th' air, that from him issued still
Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth
Was frozen. At six eyes he wept the tears
Adown three chins distilled with bloody foam.
At every mouth his teeth a sinner champed,
Bruised as with ponderous engine; so that
three

Were in this guise tormented. But far more Than from that gnawing, was the foremost panged

By the fierce rending, whence ofttimes the back Was stript of all its skin. "That upper spirit, Who hath worst punishment," so spake my guide,

'Is Judas, he that hath his head within And plies the feet without. Of the other two, Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe

And speaks not. The other, Cassius, that

appears

So large of limb. But night now reascends; And it is time for parting. All is seen."

xxxiv. 1-64.