Come, Anah! quit this chaos-founded prison, A brighter world than this, where thou shalt breathe These darken'd clouds are not the only skies. [AZAZIEL and SAMIASA fly off, and disappear with ANAH and AHOLIBAMAH. ЈАРНЕТ. The corpses of the world of thy young days: Thy song of praise! A WOMAN. They are gone! They have disappear'd amidst the roar Then to Jehovah raise Anah unto these eyes. Blessed are the dead Who die in the Lord! And though the waters be o'er earth outspread, Yet, as His word, He Be the decree adored! gave me life-He taketh but The breath which is His own: And though these eyes should be for ever shut, Nor longer this weak voice before His throne Be heard in supplicating tone, Still blessed be the Lord, For what is past, For that which is: For all are His, From first to last Time-space-eternity-life-death The vast known and immeasurable unknown. He made, and can unmake; And shall I, for a little gasp of breath, Blaspheme and groan? No; let me die, as I have lived, in faith, Nor quiver, though the universe may quake! The Prophecy of Dante. 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before,. CAMPBELL. DEDICATION. LADY! if for the cold and cloudy clime I dare to build the imitative rhyme, Spakest; and for thee to speak and be obey'd Such sounds are utter'd, and such charms display'd, So sweet a language from so fair a mouthAh! to what effort would it not persuade? Ravenna, June 21, 1819. PREFACE. In the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna, in the summer of 1819, it was suggested to the author that, having composed something on the subject of Tasso's confinement, he should do the same on Dante's exile the tomb of the poet forming one of the principal objects of interest in that city, both to the native and to the stranger. «On this hint I spake,» and the result has been the following four cantos, in terza rima, now offered to the reader. If they are understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem in various other cantos to its natural conclusion in the present age. The reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval between the conclusion of the Divina Commedia and his death, and shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my mind the Cassandra of Lycophron, and the Prophecy of Nereus by Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is the terza rima of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto tried in our language, except it may be by Mr Hayley, of whose translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to Caliph Vathek; so that -if I do not err-this poem may be considered as a metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length of those of the poet whose name I have borrowed, and most probably taken in vain. Amongst the inconveniences of authors in the present day, it is difficult for any who have a name, good or bad, to escape translation. I have had the fortune to see the fourth canto of Childe Harold trans sense. ated into Italian versi sciolti-that is, a poem writt en in the Spenserean stanza into blank verse, without regard to the natural divisions of the stanza, or of the If the present poem, being on a national topic, should chance to undergo the same fate, I would request the Italian reader to remember, that when I have failed in the imitation of his great «Padre Alighier» I have failed in imitating that which all study and few understand, since to this very day it is not yet settled what was the meaning of the allegory in the first canto of the Inferno, unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable conjecture may be considered as having decided the question. He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a nation-their literature; and, in the present bitterness of the classic and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to approve or imitate them, without finding some fault with his ultramontane presumption. I can casily enter into all this, knowing what would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a translation of Monti, or Pindemonte, or Arici, should be held up to the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader, when my business is with the English one, and be they few or many, I must take my leave of both. THE PROPHECY OF DANTE. CANTO I. ONCE more in man's frail world! which I had left My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies Lift me from that deep gulf without repeal, Where late my cars 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'd1 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, That nought on earth could more my bosom move, Relieved her wing; till found; without thy light Thou wert my life, the essence of my thought, 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 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 eye Unto my native soil, they have not yet And the night cometh; I am old in days, The world hath left me, what it found me-pure, Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows I would have had my Florence great and free: 3 My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, And loves her, loves her even in her ire. gave But this shall not be granted; let my dust No, she denied me what was mine-my roof, Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof part 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 Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw For his reward the Guelfs 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 ten thousand foes by thy sole urn. Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's marsh And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may bura 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'erarch 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, For Florence. I appeal from her to Thee! The sense of earth and earthly things come back, To lift my eyes more to the passing sail Did not my verse embalm full many an act In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume To live in narrow ways with little men, Without the power that makes them bear a crown- Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she, 5 Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought And feel, and know without repair, hath taught I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,— CANTO II. THE spirit of the fervent days of old, This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station, «Let there be darkness!» and thou grow'st a tomb! Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Alp When words were things that came to pass, and To see thy sunny fields, my Italy, thought Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold What the great seers of Israel wore within, Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed, Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed, With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still The more approach'd, and dearest were they free, The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank, and Hun, By the old barbarians, there awaits the new, Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest, All paths of torture, and insatiate yet Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set,6 Had but the royal rebel lived, perchance Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate. |