LADY! if for the cold and cloudy clime
Where I was born, but where I would not die,
Of the great Poet-Sire of Italy

I dare to build the imitative rhyme,
Harsh Runic copy of the South's sublime,
THOU art the cause; and howsoever I
Fall short of his immortal harmony,
Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime.

1 [This poem, which Lord Byron, in sending it to Mr. Murray, called "the best thing he had ever done, if not unintelligible," was written, in the summer of 1819, at

CAMPBELL.

Thou, in the pride of Beauty and of Youth,
Spakest; and for thee to speak and be obey'd
Are one; but only in the sunny South

Such sounds are utter'd, and such charms display'd,

So sweet a language from so fair a mouth-
Ah! to what effort would it not persuade?
Ravenna, June 21, 1819.

1

Ravenna. Dante's tomb, the classical pine wood, the relies of antiquity which are to be found in that place, afforded a sufficient pretext for me to invite him to come, and for him to ' accept my invitation. He came in the month of June, 1819, arriving at Ravenna on the day of the festival of the Corpus Domini. Being deprived at this time of his books, his horses, and all that occupied him at Venice, I begged him to gratify me by writing something on the subject of Dante; and, with his usual facility and rapidity, he composed his Prophecy")

* ["'Twas in a grove of spreading pines he strayed." &c. DRYDEN'S Theodore and Honors

"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 translated into Italian versi sciolti,-that is, a poem written in the Spenserean stanza into blank verse, without regard to the natural divisions of the stanza or of the sense. 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

[Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in May, 1265, of an ancient and honorable family. In the early part of his life he gained some credit in a inilitary character, and distinguished himself by his bravery in an action where the Florentines obtained a signal victory over the citizens of Arezzo. He became still inore eminent by the acquisition of court honors; and at the age of thirty-five he rose to be one of the chief magistrates of Florence, when that dignity was conferred by the suffrages of the people. From this exaltation the poet himself dated his principal misfortunes. Italy was at that time distracted by the contending factions of the Ghibelmes and Guelphs,-among the latter Dante took an active part. In one of the proscriptions he was banished, his possessions confiscated, and he died in exile in 1321. Boccaccio thus describes his person and manners: -"He was of the middle stature, of a mild disposition, and, from the time he arrived at manhood, grave in his manner and deportment. His clothes were plain, and his dress always conformable to his years: his face was long; his nose aquiline; his eyes rather large than otherwise. His complexion was dark, melancholy, and pensive. In his meals he was extremely moderate; in his manners most courteous

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 easily enter into all this, knowing what would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a tranglation 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 THE FIRST.

ONCE more in man's frail world! which I had left
So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feel
The weight of clay again,-too soon bereft
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 naught 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
Relieved her wing till found; without thy light
My paradise had still been incomplete.3
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

Pensar ben déi ch' ogni terren' piacere." Canzone, in which Dante describes the person of Beatrice, Strophe third.

4 [According to Boccaccio, Dante was a lover long before he was a soldier, and his passion for the Beatrice whom he has immortalized commenced while he was in his ninth year, and she in her eighth year. It is said that their first meeting was at a banquet in the house of Folco Portinaro, her father; and certain it is, that the impression then made on the susceptible and constant heart of Dante was not obliterated by her death, which happened after an interval of sixteen years.-CARY.]

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

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
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.

The world hath left me, what it found me, pure,
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 inake 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:1 Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He Wept over, "but thou wouldst not;" as the bird Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard

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 transfer2
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 forgetfulness,
Florence 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 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'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 wo,
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 fieldIn 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 come back, Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low, The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack, Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect

Cader tra' bouni è pur di lode degno." Sonnet of Dante, in which he represents Right, Generosity, and Temperance as banished from among men, and seeking refuge froin Love, who inhabits his bosom.

2" Ut si quis predictorum ullo tempore in fortiam dicti communis pervenerit, talis perveniens igne comburatur, sic quod moriatur." Second sentence of Florence against Dante, and the fourteen accused with him. The Latin is worthy of the sentence.-[On the 27th of January, 1302, Dante was mulcted eight thousand lire, and condemned to two years' banishment; and in case the fine was not paid, his goods were to be confiscated. On the eleventh of March, the same year, he was sentenced to a punishment due only to the most desperate of malefactors. The decree, that he and his associates in exile should be burned, if they fell into the hands of their enemies, was first discovered, in 1772, by the

Conte Ludovico Savioli. See Tiraboschi, where the sentence is given at length.]

3 [Under the pretence of opposing the power of Sylla, Marius, who had been five times elected to the consulship, aimed at the sovereign power. Stapylton says, that the Minturnian fens, in which he was discovered by Sylla's emissaries, were in Switzerland! For this accurate piece. of topography, he was indebted to the old scholiast. The i spot, however, lies on the right hand of the ferry of Garigliano, as you go from Rome to Naples.-GIFFORD.]

4

[In one so highly endowed by nature, and so consummate by instruction, we may well sympathize with a resentment which exile and poverty rendered perpetually fresh. But the heart of Dante was naturally sensible, and even tem der: his poetry is full of comparisons from rural life, and the sincerity of his early passion for Beatrice pierces through the veil of allegory that surrounds her. But the memory of hus injuries pursued him into the immensity of eternal light, and in the company of saints and angels, his unforgiving spirit darkens at the name of Florence.-HALLAN.]