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The Prophecy of Dante[;] Canto the First

The Prophecy of Dante[;] Canto the First

1Once more in Man's frail world! which I had left
2So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feel
3The weight of clay again,--too soon bereft
4Of the Immortal Vision which could heal
5My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies
6Lift me from that deep Gulf without repeal,
7Where late my ears rung with the damned cries
8Of Souls in hopeless bale; and from that place
9Of lesser torment, whence men may arise
10Pure from the fire to join the Angelic race;
11Midst whom my own bright Beatricē blessed
12My spirit with her light; and to the base
13Of the Eternal Triad! first, last, best,
14Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God!
15Soul universal! led the mortal guest,
16Unblasted by the Glory, though he trod
17From star to star to reach the almighty throne.
18Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod
19So long hath pressed, and the cold marble stone,
20Thou sole pure Seraph of my earliest love,
21Love so ineffable, and so alone,
22That nought on earth could more my bosom move,
23And meeting thee in Heaven was but to meet
24That without which my Soul, like the arkless dove,
25Had wandered still in search of, nor her feet
26Relieved her wing till found; without thy light
27My Paradise had still been incomplete.
28Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight
29Thou wert my Life, the Essence of my thought,
30Loved ere I knew the name of Love, and bright
31Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought
32With the World's war, and years, and banishment,
33And tears for thee, by other woes untaught;
34For mine is not a nature to be bent
35By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd,
36And though the long, long conflict hath been spent
37In vain,--and never more, save when the cloud
38Which overhangs the Apennine my mind's eye
39Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud
40Of me, can I return, though but to die,
41Unto my native soil,--they have not yet
42Quenched the old exile's spirit, stern and high.
43But the Sun, though not overcast, must set
44And the night cometh; I am old in days,
45And deeds, and contemplation, and have met
46 Destruction face to face in all his ways.
47The World hath left me, what it found me, pure,
48And if I have not gathered yet its praise,
49I sought it not by any baser lure;
50Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name
51May form a monument not all obscure,
52Though such was not my Ambition's end or aim,
53To add to the vain-glorious list of those
54Who dabble in the pettiness of fame,
55And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows
56Their sail, and deem it glory to be classed
57With conquerors, and Virtue's other foes,
58In bloody chronicles of ages past.
59I would have had my Florence great and free;
60Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast
61Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He
62Wept over, "but thou wouldst not;" as the bird
63Gathers its young, I would have gathered thee
64Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard
65My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce,
66Against the breast that cherished thee was stirred
67Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce,
68And doom this body forfeit to the fire.
69Alas! how bitter is his country's curse
70To him who for that country would expire,
71But did not merit to expire by her,
72And loves her, loves her even in her ire.
73The day may come when she will cease to err,
74The day may come she would be proud to have
75The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer
76Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave.
77But this shall not be granted; let my dust
78Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave
79Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust
80Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassume
81My indignant bones, because her angry gust
82Forsooth is over, and repealed her doom;
83No,--she denied me what was mine--my roof,
84And shall not have what is not hers--my tomb.
85Too long her arméd wrath hath kept aloof
86The breast which would have bled for her, the heart
87That beat, the mind that was temptation proof,
88The man who fought, toiled, travelled, and each part
89Of a true citizen fulfilled, and saw
90For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art
91Pass his destruction even into a law.
92These things are not made for forgetfulness,
93Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw
94The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress
95Of such endurance too prolonged to make
96My pardon greater, her injustice less,
97Though late repented; yet--yet for her sake
98I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine,
99My own Beatricē, I would hardly take
100Vengeance upon the land which once was mine,
101And still is hallowed by thy dust's return,
102Which would protect the murderess like a shrine,
103And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn.
104Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's marsh
105And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burn
106At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,
107And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe
108Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch
109My brow with hopes of triumph,--let them go!
110Such are the last infirmities of those
111Who long have suffered more than mortal woe,
112And yet being mortal still, have no repose
113But on the pillow of Revenge--Revenge,
114Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows
115With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change,
116When we shall mount again, and they that trod
117Be trampled on, while Death and Até range
118O'er humbled heads and severed necks----Great God!
119Take these thoughts from me--to thy hands I yield
120My many wrongs, and thine Almighty rod
121Will fall on those who smote me,--be my Shield!
122As thou hast been in peril, and in pain,
123In turbulent cities, and the tented field--
124In toil, and many troubles borne in vain
125For Florence,--I appeal from her to Thee!
126Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign,
127Even in that glorious Vision, which to see
128And live was never granted until now,
129And yet thou hast permitted this to me.
130Alas! with what a weight upon my brow
131The sense of earth and earthly things come back,
132Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,
133The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,
134Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect
135Of half a century bloody and black,
136And the frail few years I may yet expect
137Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear,
138For I have been too long and deeply wrecked
139On the lone rock of desolate Despair,
140To lift my eyes more to the passing sail
141Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;
142Nor raise my voice--for who would heed my wail?
143I am not of this people, nor this age,
144And yet my harpings will unfold a tale
145Which shall preserve these times when not a page
146Of their perturbéd annals could attract
147An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,
148Did not my verse embalm full many an act
149Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doom
150Of spirits of my order to be racked
151In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
152Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
153Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
154And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
155The name of him--who now is but a name,
156And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
157Spread his--by him unheard, unheeded--fame;
158And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
159Is nothing; but to wither thus--to tame
160My mind down from its own infinity--
161To live in narrow ways with little men,
162A common sight to every common eye,
163A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,
164Ripped from all kindred, from all home, all things
165That make communion sweet, and soften pain--
166To feel me in the solitude of kings
167Without the power that makes them bear a crown--
168To envy every dove his nest and wings
169Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
170On Arno, till he perches, it may be,
171Within my all inexorable town,
172Where yet my boys are, and that fatal She,
173Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
174Destruction for a dowry--this to see
175And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
176A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
177I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
178They made an Exile--not a Slave of me.