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 hbrarian 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.

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

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 de

part,

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!" 1 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 Whelined 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,

Where it 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 to the place,

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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.

EARTH'S CENTRE PASSED.

"ERE from the abyss I separate," thus when risen I began : "My guide! vouchsafe few words to set me free

From error's thraldom. Where is now the ice? How standeth he in posture thus reversed? And how from eve to morn in space so brief Hath the sun made his transit?" He in few Thus answering spake: "Thou deemest thou art still

On the other side the centre, where I grasped The abhorred worm that boreth through the world.

Thou wast on the other side, so long as I Descended; when I turned, thou didst o'er

Through fear of him did veil her with the sea,
And to our hemisphere retired. Perchance,
To shun him, was the vacant space left here,
By what of firm land on this side appears,
That sprang aloof." There is a place beneath,
From Belzebub as distant, as extends
The vaulted tomb; discovered not by sight,
But by the sound of brooklet, that descends
This way along the hollow of a rock,
Which, as it winds with no precipitous course,
The wave hath eaten. By that hidden way
My guide and I did enter, to return

To the fair world: and heedless of repose
We climbed, he first, I following his steps,
Till on our view the beautiful lights of heaven
Dawned through a circular opening in the

cave:

Thence issuing we again beheld the stars.

xxxiv. 115-133.

PURGATORY.

I ENTER, and I see thee in the gloom
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
And strive to make my steps keep pace

with thine.

The air is filled with some unknown perfume;

The congregation of the dead make room

For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine: Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine

The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. From the confessionals I hear arise

Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, And lamentations from the crypts below; And then a voice celestial, that begins With the pathetic words, "Although your sins

As scarlet be," and ends with "as the

snow."

With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,

She stands before thee, who so long ago Filled thy young heart with passion and the

woe

From which thy song and all its splendor

came;

And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy

name,

The ice about thy heart melts as the snow On mountain heights, and the swift overflow Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of

shame.

Thou makest full confession; and a gleam, As if the dawn on some dark forest cast, Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase; Lethe and Eunoe - the remembered dream And the forgotten sorrow-bring at last That perfect pardon which is perfect peace. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

THE STEEP ASCENT.

In the first canto the poet describes the delight he experi enced at issuing a little before dawn from the infernal regions, into the pure air that surrounds the isle of Purgatory; and then relates how he met the shade of Cato of Utica, who, having warned him and Virgil what was needful to be done before they proceeded on their way through Purgatory, disappeared, and the two poets went towards the shore, where Virgil cleansed Dante's face with the dew, and girded him with a reed, as Cato had commanded. In the second canto occurs the vision of "The Celestial Pilot," given in Mr. Longfellow's version, on page 628. In the third canto the mountain of Purgatory is reached, the antipodes of Jerusalem. ON Sanleo's road Who journeys, or to Noli low descends, Or mounts Bismantua's height, must use his feet;

But here a man had need to fly, I mean

With the swift wing and plumes of high desire, Conducted by his aid, who gave me hope, And with light furnished to direct my way. We through the broken rock ascended, close Pent on each side, while underneath the ground

Asked help of hands and feet. When we arrived

Near on the highest ridge of the steep bank,
Where the plain level opened, I exclaimed,
"O Master! say, which way can we proceed."
He answered," Let no step of thine recede.
Behind me gain the mountain, till to us
Some practised guide appear." . . . .
"Such is this steep ascent,
That it is ever difficult at first,
But more a man proceeds, less evil grows.
When pleasant it shall seem to thee, so much
That upward going shall be easy to thee
As in a vessel to go down the tide,

Then of this path thou wilt have reached the end.

There hope to rest thee from thy toil. No

more

I answer, and thus far for certain know."

iv. 23-38, 85-93.

THE EFFECT OF PRAYER.

WHEN I was freed

From all those spirits, who prayed for others'

prayers

To hasten on their state of blessedness;
Straight I began: "O thou, my luminary!
It seems expressly in thy text denied,
That heaven's supreme decree can ever bend
To supplication; yet with this design
Do these entreat. Can then their hope be

vain?

Or is thy saying not to me revealed?"

He thus to me: "Both what I write is plain,

And these deceived not in their hope; if well
Thy mind consider, that the sacred height
Of judgment doth not stoop, because love's
flame

In a short moment all fulfils, which he,
Who sojourns here, in right should satisfy.
Besides, when I this point concluded thus,
By praying no defect could be supplied;
Because the prayer had none access to Gol.
Yet in this deep suspicion rest thou not
Contented, unless she assure thee so,
Who betwixt truth and mind infuses light:
I know not if thou take me right; I mean
Beatrice. Her thou shalt behold above.
Upon this mountian's crown, fair seat of joy."

VI 26-49

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VIRTUE NOT HEREDITARY. RARELY into the branches of the tree Doth human worth mount up: and so ordains He who bestows it, that as his free gift It may be called.

vii. 122-125.

THE SERPENT TEMPTER.

Under the guidance of Sordello of Mantua the journey continues. The poet sees three stars (Faith, Hope, and Charity) as the first day in Purgatory closes.

"WHAT there aloft, my son, has caught thy gaze?"

I answered: "The three torches, with which here

The pole is all on fire." He then to me: "The four resplendent stars, thou saw'st this morn,

Are there beneath; and these, risen in their stead."

While yet he spoke, Sordello to himself Drew him, and cried: "Lo, there our enemy!" And with his hand pointed that way to look.

Along the side, where barrier none arose Around the little vale, a serpent lay, Such haply as gave Eve the bitter food. Between the grass and flowers, the evil snake Came on, reverting oft his lifted head; And, as a beast that smooths its polished coat, Licking his back.

viii. 88-102.

THE GATE OF ST. PETER. READER ! thou markest how my theme doth rise;

Nor wonder therefore, if more artfully

I prop the structure. Nearer now we drew, Arrived whence, in that part, where first a breach

As of a wall appeared, I could descry
A portal, and three steps beneath, that led
For inlet there, of different color each;
And one who watched, but spake not yet a
word.

As more and more mine eye did stretch its view,

I marked him seated on the highest step,
In visage such, as past my power to bear.
Grasped in his hand, a naked sword glanced
back

The rays so towards me, that I oft in vain My sight directed. "Speak, from whence ye stand";

He cried: "What would ye? Where is your escort ?

Take heed your coming upward harm ye not."