DEDICATION.*

LADY! if for the cold and cloudy clime

Where I was born, but where I would not die,
Of the great poet-sire of Italy

I dare to build the imitative rhyme,

Harsh Runic copy of the South's sublime,

THOU art the cause: and, howsoever I
Fall short of his immortal harmony,
Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime.
Thou, in the pride of beauty and of youth,

Spakest; and for thee to speak and be obey'd

Are one; but only in the sunny South

Such sounds are utter'd. and such charms display'd, So sweet a language from so fair a mouth— Ah! to what effort would it not persuade ? Ravenna, June 21, 1819

This poem is dedicated to the Countess Guiccioli.-E.

PREFACE.

In the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna, in the summer of 1819, it was suggested to the author that, having composed something on the subject of Tasso's confinement, he should do the same on Dante's exile— the tomb of the poet forming one of the principal objects of interest in that city, both to the native and to the stranger.

"On this hint I spake," and the result has been the following four cantos, in terza rima, now offered to the reader. If they are understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem in various other cantos to its natural conclusion in the present age. The reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval between the conclusion of the Divina Commedia and his death, and shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my mind the Cassandra of Lycophron, and the Prophecy of Nereus by Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is the terza rima of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto tried in our language, except it may be by Mr. Hayley, of whose translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to Caliph Vathek; so that-if I do not err-this poem may be considered as a metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length as those of the poet whose name I have borrowed, and most probably taken in vain

Amongst the inconveniences of authors in the present day, it is difficult for any who have a name, good or bad, to escape translation. I have had the fortune to see the fourth canto of Childe Harold translated into Italian versi sciolti—that is, a poem written in the Spenserean stanza into blank verse, without regard to the natural divisions of the stanza, or of the sense. If the present poem, being on a national topic, should chance to undergo the same fate, I would request the Italian reader to remember, that when I have failed in the imitation of his great "Padre Alighier," I have failed in imitating that which all study and few understand; since to this very day it is not yet settled what was the meaning of the allegory in the first canto of the Inferno,

unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable conjecture may be considered as having decided the question.

He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a nation—their literature; and, in the present bitterness of the classic and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to approve or imitate them, without finding some fault with his ultramontane presumption. I can easily enter into all this, knowing what would be * thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a translation of Monti, or Pindemonte, or Arici, should be held up to the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader, when my business is with the English one, and, be they few or many, I must take my leave of both.

THE

PROPHECY OF DANTE.

CANTO 1.

ONCE more in man's frail world! which I had left
So long that 't was forgotten; and I feel
The weight of clay again,-too soon bereft
Of the immortal vision which could heal

My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies
Lift me from that deep gulf without repeal,
Where late my ears rung with the damned cries

Of souls in hopeless bale; and from that place
Of lesser torment, whence men may arise
Pure from the fire to join the angelic race;
'Midst whom my own bright Beatrice bless'd'
My spirit with her light; and to the base
Of the Eternal Triad! first, last, best,
Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God!
Soul universal! led the mortal guest,

Unblasted by the glory, though he trod

From star to star to reach the almighty throne.
Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod

So long hath press'd, and the cold marble stone,
Thou sole
earliest love,
pure seraph of my
Love so ineffable, and so alone,

That nought on earth could more my bosom move,

And meeting thee in heaven was but to meet

That without which my soul, like the arkless dove, Had wander'd still in search of, nor her feet

2

Relieved her wing till found; without thy light My paradise had still been incomplete. Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight Thou wert my life, the essence of my thought,3 Loved ere I knew the name of love, and bright Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought With the world's war, and years, and banishment, And tears for thee, by other woes untaught: For mine is not a nature to be bent

eye

By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd; And though the long, long conflict hath been spent In vain, and never more, save when the cloud Which overhangs the Apennine, my mind's Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proui Of me, can I return, though but to die, Unto my native soil, they have not yet Quench'd the old exile's spirit, stern and high. But the sun, though not overcast, must set, And the night cometh; I am old in days, And deeds, and contemplation, and have met Destruction face to face in all his ways.

-pure;

The world hath left me, what it found me-
And if I have not gather'd yet its praise,

I sought it not by any baser lure.

Man wrongs, and Time avenges; and my name
May form a monument not all obscure,

Though such was not my ambition's end or aim,
To add to the vain glorious list of those
Who dabble in the pettiness of fame,

And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows.
Their sail, and deem it glory to be class'd
With conquerors, and virtue's other foes,

In bloody chronicles of ages past.

I would have had my Florence great and free :^
Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast
Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He
Wept over, "but thou wouldst not."
Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee
Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard

As the bird

My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherish'd thee was stirr'd Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce, And doom this body forfeit to the fire. Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who for that country would expire! But did not merit to expire by her,

And loves her, loves her even in her ire.

The day may come when she will cease to err,

The day may come she would be proud to have