No More Learning

Thus the vain fool who strove to glut
His rage, refining on my pain,
Sent me forth to the wilderness, 850
Bound--naked--bleeding--and alone,
To pass the desert to a throne,--
What mortal his own doom may guess?
Let none despond, let none despair!
To-morrow the Borysthenes
May see our coursers graze at ease
Upon his Turkish bank,--and never
Had I such welcome for a river
As I shall yield when safely there. [275]
Comrades, good night! "--The Hetman threw 860
His length beneath the oak-tree shade,
With leafy couch already made--
A bed nor comfortless nor new
To him, who took his rest whene'er
The hour arrived, no matter where:
His eyes the hastening slumbers steep.
And if ye marvel Charles forgot
To thank his tale, _he_ wondered not,--
The King had been an hour asleep!


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[276] the imitative rhyme,
Harsh Runic[277] 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 obeyed
Are one; but only in the sunny South
Such sounds are uttered, and such charms displayed,
So sweet a language from so fair a mouth--[278]
Ah! to what effort would it not persuade?

Ravenna, June 21, 1819.





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[279]
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,[280] 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_,[281] 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 of
those of the poet, whose name I have borrowed and most likely 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_[282]
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 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,"[283] 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[284] 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, Pindemonte, or Arici,[285] 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,
where 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 THE FIRST.

Once more in Man's frail world! which I had left
So long that 'twas 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; 10
Midst whom my own bright Beatric? [286] blessed
My spirit with her light; and to the base
Of the Eternal Triad!