impulses. Lo! Beatrice and all the blest are clasping their hands to thee, joining in my prayer!"

Those eyes which God doth love and venerate,

Upon the suppliant bent, revealed to us

How dear to her are those who supplicate.

LECTURE V
VISION

"O IMAGINATION," cries Dante, "which at times dost so abstract us from the outer world that a man heeds it not though a thousand trumpets blare about him, who kindles thee, when the sense offers thee naught? Art thou kindled by a light that takes shape in Heaven, either by itself or by a will which directs it downward? Is it a chance ray from the stars, or is it the mysterious purpose of the Lord, operating through their beams, that suddenly flashes a picture before the mind's eye? Whether the gift come from nature or from God, it is in some measure transmissible from man to man. The poet not only sees visions but has the power of clothing them in words and thus communicating them to others. This gift was possessed in the highest degree by Dante. The reading of his poem is like a dream of magic pictures pictures clear and beautiful, but momentary, crowding one another in their swift, ceaseless eddies, while the deep current of thought rolls on below. For most readers of Dante nowadays, this lightning play of description constitutes his principal charm.

Not a few of his sketches are evidently sug

gested by his reading, many more by his experience of men and things; some would indeed seem to have been flashed into his brain by the stars. Now and again we find a scene, drawn by him in his own way, but born of a general impression derived from some book ancient or modern. Virgil's Elysian Fields are probably the prototype both of the Noble Castle, which shelters the great spirits of pagan antiquity in Dante's Limbus, shining bright and peaceful in the midst of the dark air a-quiver with sighs, - and of the Valley of the Princes, flowery and sweet in the lap of the mountainside of Purgatory, peopled by shades of recent rulers. Dante's Garden of Eden is made of features common in legend — trees, flowers, up birds, streams - but invested with new loveliness by Dante's phrasing and with new interest by his introduction of the sweet maiden, Matilda, the embodiment of eternal springtime. It is one thing to say, as the old stories do: "There did they behold wonderful trees, which never lost their leaves; and marvelous birds, singing songs not heard on earth; and miraculous flowers covering all the ground; and four beautiful rivers," and quite another thing to write such a passage as

Dante's

Vago già di cercar dentro e dintorno

La divina foresta spessa e viva,

Ch' agli occhi temperava il nuovo giorno,
Senza più aspettar, lasciai la riva,

Prendendo la campagna lento lento
Su per lo suol che d'ogni parte oliva.

Impatient now the mysteries to spy
Within the thick and lusty forestland
Which screened the rising sunshine from the eye,
Awaiting naught beside, I left the strand,
Advancing slowly, slowly 'mid the trees
O'er turf that fragrance breathed on every hand.
A gentle wind, which, never changing, flees
Eternally, was blowing on my brow,

But blowing softly as the softest breeze;
And, quick to quake, the leaves on every bough
In that direction all inclining went

Where casts its shade the holy mountain now;
But not enough from their uprightness bent
To still the birds that in the tree-tops stay
All fearless, on their highest art intent.
With glad, full-throated song, the coming day
They greeted 'mid the twigs in music clear,
While rustling leaves accompanied their lay.
Such burden we from branch to branch may hear
Throughout the grove of pines on Chiassi's shore,
When Æolus Scirocco sends anear.

So far within the ancient woodland's core

My lingering steps had carried me that I The spot from whence I came could see no more, When lo! a brook forbade my going by,

Which toward the left, with tiny ripples, pried The grass which all along its bank did lie.

The purest rill that runs on mountainside

With us, would some uncleanness seem to show Compared to that, which naught doth ever hide, Tho' shady, O! so shady it doth flow

Beneath undying green, which not a ray
Of sun or moon will e'er admit below.
My feet did halt, and yet mine eyes did stray
Beyond the streamlet, gazing, wondering
At all the fresh and varied gifts of May;
And then appeared to me, as doth a thing
Which unexpectedly its face hath shown

Make for amazement every thought take wing, A lady walking through the field alone,

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Singing and plucking, choosing flower from flower
Amid the tints wherewith her path was strewn.

Hell, as well as Eden, has its traditions. In other visions of the lower world, as in Dante's, there is a graded immersion in ice; but there are no faces grinning doglike," and the author does not "forever afterwards shudder at the sight of frozen pools." In the apocryphal Vision of St. Paul there are murderers plunged to different depths in a fiery river; but we miss the "shrill shrieks of the boiled" as we walk "along the edge of the boiling red." Brother Alberico speaks of a fiery breath blowing spirits before it; but it is an unpoetic breath, with no suggestion of "starlings borne along by their wings, in cold weather, in a broad, close array" nor of "dirge-singing cranes making a long streak of themselves in the air," and it does not blow in a place "dumb of all light."

Now I begin the doleful notes to hear

Not far away from me, for I am come

Where cries of grief abounding smite mine ear.
The place I reach, of every light is dumb,

And bellows like the storm-tormented main
When warring winds on ocean's surface drum.

The never-ceasing hellish hurricane

Sweeps on the spirits in its circling swirl,

Turning and clashing them in endless pain.

Oftener than a whole scene, it is some rapid little sketch that stirs Dante's fancy and moves him to free imitation. Such is the landslip de