THE DIVINE COMEDY.

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CANTO I.

ARGUMENT.

The Poet, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, 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. He follows the Roman poet.

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.

How first I entered it I scarce can say,
Such sleepy dulness in that instant weighed
My senses down, when the true path I left;

But when a mountain's foot I reached, where closed
The valley that had pierced my heart with dread,
I looked aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,

1. In the Poet's thirty-fifth year. He was born in 1265, and the vision is supposed to take place in 1300. In the Convito (iv. 23) the life of man is compared to an arch, the highest point of which is reached at the age of thirtyfive. The date of the poem is more definitely given in Hell, xxi. 109 ff.

2. Symbol of sin into which Dante had fallen after the death of Beatrice.

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16. The sun, which according to the Ptolemaic system is a planet. Used here in the Scriptural

6. "Even when I remember I am afraid." and symbolical sense. Job xxi. 6.

Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.

Then was a little respite to the fear,
That in my heart's recesses deep had lain,
All of that night, so pitifully past:

And as a man, with difficult short breath,
Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore,
Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands
At gaze; e'en so my spirit, that yet failed
Struggling with terror, turned to view the straits,
That none hath past and lived. My weary frame
After short pause recomforted, again

I journeyed on over that lonely steep,
The hinder foot still firmer.

Scarce the ascent
Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light,
And covered with a speckled skin, appeared;
Nor, when it saw me, vanished, rather strove
To check my onward going; that ofttimes,
With purpose to retrace my steps, I turned.

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The hour was morning's prime, and on his way
Aloft the sun ascended with those stars,

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That with him rose when Love divine first moved

Those its fair works: so that with joyous hope
All things conspired to fill me, the gay skin
Of that swift animal, the matin dawn

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And the sweet season. Soon that joy was chased,
And by new dread succeeded, when in view
A lion came, 'gainst me, as it appeared,
With his head held aloft and hunger-mad,
That e'en the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf
Was at his heels, who in her leanness seemed
Full of all wants, and many a land hath made
Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear
O'erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appalled,
That of the height all hope I lost. As one,
Who, with his gain elated, sees the time
When all unwares is gone, he inwardly
Mourns with heart-griping anguish; such was I,
Haunted by that fell beast, never at peace,

29. It is to be remembered, that in ascending a hill the weight of the body rests on the hinder foot.

30. The three animals in the following lines were evidently suggested by Jeremiah v. 6,"Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities."

The panther signifies here worldly pleasure; or according to those who see a political allegory in the poem, Florence, divided by the Guelphs and Ghibellines.

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Who coming o'er against me, by degrees

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Impelled me where the sun in silence rests.

While to the lower space with backward step

I fell, my ken discerned the form of one,

Whose voice seemed faint through long disuse of speech.

When him in that great desert I espied,

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"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 mount
Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?"
"And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,
From which such copious floods of eloquence
Have issued?" I with front abashed replied.
“Glory and light of all the tuneful train! ·

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May it avail me, that I long with zeal

Have sought thy volume, and with love immense

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Have conned it o'er. My master thou, and guide!
Thou he from whom alone I have derived

That style, which for its beauty into fame

Exalts me. See the beast, from whom I fled.

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O save me from her, thou illustrious sage!
For every vein and pulse throughout my frame
She hath made tremble." He, soon as he saw
That I was weeping, answered, “Thou must needs

56. Hence Milton appears to have taken his xxii. 70.] 3. Homer being unknown then, Viridea in the Samson Agonistes:

"The sun to me is dark,

And silent as the moon," etc.

gil was the only poet who had described a descent to Hell.

65. This is explained by the commentators to mean "Although it was rather late with

The same metaphor will recur, Canto V., respect to my birth, before Julius Cæsar as

v. 29.

"Into a place I came

Where light was silent all."

sumed the supreme authority, and made himself perpetual dictator."

Virgil indeed was born twenty-five years

64. Virgil was really born in Andes, to-day before that event. Pietola, a village near Mantua.

Dante seems to have chosen him as his guide for three reasons:

1. He was his master in poetry. 2. The Middle Ages regarded Virgil as a prophet of the coming of Christ. [See note to Purg.

81. "Thou art my father, thou my author, thou."

Milton, P. L. ii. 864. 84. Dante has seen three beasts, but henceforth he speaks of only one,- the wolf.

Another way pursue, if thou wouldst 'scape

From out that savage wilderness.

This beast,

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At whom thou criest, her way will suffer none

To pass, and no less hindrance makes than death:
So bad and so accursed in her kind,

That never sated is her ravenous will,

Still after food more craving than before.
To many an animal in wedlock vile
She fastens, and shall yet to many more,
Until that greyhound come, who shall destroy
Her with sharp pain. He will not life support
By earth nor its base metals, but by love,
Wisdom, and virtue, and his land shall be
The land 'twixt either Feltro. In his might
Shall safety to Italia's plains arise,

For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure,
Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell.

He, with incessant chase, through every town
Shall worry, until he to hell at length

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Restore her, thence by envy first let loose..

I for thy profit pondering now devise,

That thou mayst follow me; and I, thy guide,
Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,

Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see
Spirits of old tormented, who invoke

A second death; and those next view, who dwell

Content in fire, for that they hope to come,

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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 depart,
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

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"Umile Italia," from Virgil, Æn. iii.

"Humilemque videmus

Italiam."

104. Characters in the Eneid, who died fighting for their country. With the death of Turnus Virgil ends his poem.

113. And in these days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." Rev. ix. 6. 115. The spirits in Purgatory.

118. Beatrice, who conducts the Poet through Paradise. She represents Divine Wisdom, while Virgil represents Earthly Wisdom.

O happy those,

His citadel and throne.
Whom there he chooses!" I 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 said'st,
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.

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CANTO II.

ARGUMENT.

After the invocation, which poets are used to prefix to their works, he shows that, on a consideration of his own strength, he doubted whether it sufficed for the journey proposed to him, but that, being comforted by Virgil, he at last took courage, and followed him as his guide and master.

Now was the day departing, and the air,

Imbrowned with shadows, from their toils released
All animals on earth; and I alone
Prepared myself the conflict to sustain,
Both of sad pity, and that perilous road,
Which my unerring memory shall retrace.

O Muses! O high genius! now vouchsafe
Your aid! O mind! that all I saw hast kept
Safe in a written record, here thy worth
And eminent endowments come to proof.

I thus began: "Bard! thou who art my guide,
Consider well, if virtue be in me
Sufficient, ere to this high enterprise

Thou trust me. Thou hast told that Silvius' sire,
Yet clothed in corruptible flesh, among

The immortal tribes had entrance, and was there
Sensibly present. Yet if heaven's great Lord,
Almighty foe to ill, such favor showed,
In contemplation of the high effect,

Both what and who from him should issue forth,

130. The gate of Purgatory, which the Poet feigns to be guarded by an angel placed on that station by St. Peter.

1. A compendium of Virgil's description, En. iv. 522. Compare Apollonius Rhodius, iii. 744, and iv. 1058.

"The day gan failin; and the darke night, That revith bestis from their businesse, Berafte me my booke," etc.

Chaucer, The Assemble of Foules.

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8. "O thought that write all that I met,
And in the tresorie it set

Of my braine, now shall men see
If any virtue in thee be."

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Chaucer, Temple of Fame, ii. 18.

14. Æneas. 19. The "high effect" is the founding of Rome.

20. The Roman Empire and Cæsar.