And he made answer: "Thou shalt mark when they Are borne along to the belovèd nest On wide and steady pinions homeward bent, Us who left earth encrimsoned with our blood. If friendly were the Universal King We would be praying to Him for thy peace, Whatever ye to speak and hear may please, That will we speak and hear you close at hand, Beside the water where descends the Po Laid hold on this one 2 for the person fair 1 Francesca, the wife of Giovanni of Rimini, and Paolo, her husband's brother, became lovers; Giovanni, finding them together, killed them. The lines following are spoken to Dante by Francesca. 2 Paolo. Love led us down to death together: Cain 1 Awaits the soul of him who laid us dead."- That, "Whereon thinkest thou?" the Poet said. How many tender thoughts, what longing drew Thereafter I turned to them, and spoke anew: "Francesca, all thy torments dim mine eyes With tears that flow for sympathy and rue. But tell me, in the time of the sweet sighs By what, and how did Love to you disclose The vague desires, that ye should realize?"And she to me: "It is the woe of woes Remembrance of the happy time to keep To know the first root of a love so dear, One day together read we for good cheer Of Love, how he laid hold on Launcëlot: Many and many a time that reading brought Our eyes to meet, and blancht our faces o'er, 1 A part of the bottommost circle of Hell, to which are sent the m derers of their own kindred. It is named after the slayer of Abel. 2 Virgil, Dante's "Teacher," was doomed to remain in Hell. Gallehaut was the book and writer too:1 Dante 42 D ULYSSES 2 ANTE and Virgil, on their way through Hell, have come to the eighth chasm of the eighth circle, where false counselors innumerable, workers of deceit, are swathed each in his separate fire. One flame, cloven at its tip into two prongs, conceals within itself the shades of Ulysses and Diomed. Dante evinces a deep desire to speak with the famous heroes, and Virgil, divining his inmost thought, addresses them in the opening words of the passage. The strange story told by Ulysses is believed to be wholly the invention of Dante's imagination. "O ye, within one fire remaining two, Or much or little merited of you 1 Gallehaut, according to the account which Paolo and Francesca read, was the confidant of Guinevere and Launcelot in their illicit love. (See the note by H. Oelsner in the "Temple" Dante.) 2 Approximately the second half of the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno. From Anderson's Divine Comedy, copyright, 1921, by World Book Com pany, publishers, Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York. Waving the summit back and forth again, Thereafter, like a speaking tongue, the flame Flung forth a voice and spoke as follows: "When Of Circe I had taken leave, the same Who held me near Gaeta a year and more, With but one vessel, and that little train When in upon that narrow pass we bore, And had left Ceuta on the other shore. Be willing to forgo experience Of the unpeopled world beyond the sun. Regard your origin,-from whom and whence! Not to exist like brutes, but made were ye To follow virtue and intelligence.' With this brief speech I made my company Of the other pole, and ours at such descent Five times rekindled and as many spent The light beneath the moon did wane away, With distance, and upreared a loftier brow We joyed, but joy soon turned to weeping now, Thrice with the waters all, it whirled her fast Dante 3 ULYSSES T little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole Jnequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. cannot rest from travel; I will drink ife to the lees. All times I have enjoyed |