National Epics Part 42

"Before the dawn I woke and heard my sons, The helpless children with me, in their sleep, Cry out for bread, cries pushed from sobbings deep.

Right cruel art thou, if not e'en now runs To tears thy grief at what my heart forbode, If tears of thine at misery's tale e'er flowed.

And then they woke, and came the hour around Which had been wont our scanty meal to bring; But from our dreams dumb terrors seemed to spring;

"When from below we heard the dreadful sound Of nails; the horrible tower was closed; all dumb I let my gaze into my sons' eyes come.

Weep I did not, like stone my feelings lay.

They wept, and spoke my little Anselm: 'Pray Why lookest so? Father, what ails thee, say?'

Shed I no tear, nor answered all that day Nor the next night, until another sun His journey through the wide world had begun.

"Then came a small ray into our sad, sad den, And when in their four faces I beheld That carking grief which mine own visage held, Mine hands for grief I bit, and they, who then Deemed that I did it from desire to eat, Stood up each one at once upon his feet, And said: 'Father, 'twill give us much less pain If thou wilt eat of us: of thee was born This hapless flesh, and be it by thee torn.'

"Myself I calmed that they might not so grieve; Mute that day and the next we were; O thou Most cruel earth, that didst not open now!

When we the fourth day's agony did receive Stretched at my feet himself my Gaddo threw, And said: 'My father, canst thou nothing do?'

There died he, and, as now sees me thy sight, The three I saw fall one by one; first died One on the fifth; deaths two the sixth me tried.

"Then blind, I groped o'er them to left and right, And for three days called on their spirits dead; Then grief before the power of fasting fled."

_Wilstach's Translation, Inferno. Canto x.x.xIII._

BUONCONTE DI MONTEFELTRO.

On the second terrace of the Ante-Purgatory, on the Purgatorial Mount, were the spirits of those whose lives were ended by violence. Among those who here addressed Dante was Buonconte di Montefeltro, who was slain in the battle of Campaldino, and whose body was never found.

Another then: "Ah, be thy cherished aim Attained that to the lofty Mount thee draws, As thou with pity shalt advance my cause.

Of Montefeltro I Buonconte am; Giovanna, and she only, for me cares; Hence among those am I whom waiting wears."

"What violence or what chance led thee so wide From Campaldino," I of him inquired, "That's still unknown thy burial-place retired?"

"Oh, Casentino's foot," he thus replied, "Archiano's stream o'erflows, which hath its rise Above the Hermitage under Apennine skies.

There where its name is lost did I arrive, Pierced through and through the throat, in flight, Upon the plain made with my life-blood bright;

"There sight I lost, and did for speech long strive; At last I uttered Mary's name, and fell A lifeless form, mine empty flesh a sh.e.l.l.

Truth will I speak, below do thou it hymn; Took me G.o.d's Angel up, and he of h.e.l.l Cried out: 'O thou from Heaven, thou doest well To rob from me the eternal part of him For one poor tear, that me of him deprives; In other style I'll deal with other lives!'

"Well know'st thou how in air is gathered dim That humid vapor which to water turns Soon as the cold its rising progress learns.

The fiend that ill-will joined (which aye seeks ill) To intellectual power, which mist and wind Moved by control which faculties such can find, And afterwards, when the day was spent, did fill The s.p.a.ce from Protomagno to where tower The Mounts with fog; and high Heaven's covering power

"The pregnant atmosphere moist to water changed.

Down fell the rain, and to the ditches fled, Whate'er of it the soil's thirst had not sped; And, as it with the mingling torrents ranged Towards the royal river, so it flowed That over every obstacle wild it rode.

The robust river found my stiffened frame Near to its outlet, and it gave a toss To Arno, loosening from my breast the cross

"I made of me when agony me o'ercame; Along his banks and bottoms he me lapped, Then in his muddy spoils he me enwrapped."

_Wilstach's Translation, Purgatorio, Canto V._

BEATRICE DESCENDING FROM HEAVEN.

Dante and Vergil mounted to the Terrestial Paradise, where, while they talked with Matilda, the Car of the Church Triumphant appeared in the greatest splendor. As it stopped before Dante it was enveloped in a shower of roses from the hands of a hundred angels.

I have beheld ere now, when dawn would pale, The eastern hemisphere's tint of roseate sheen, And all the opposite heaven one gem serene, And the uprising sun, beneath such powers Of vapory influence tempered, that the eye For a long s.p.a.ce its fiery s.h.i.+eld could try:

E'en so, embosomed in a cloud of flowers, Which from those hands angelical upward played, And roseate all the car triumphal made, And showered a snow-white veil with olive bound, Appeared a Lady, green her mantle, name Could not describe her robe unless 't were flame.

And mine own spirit, which the past had found Often within her presence, free from awe, And which could never from me trembling draw, And sight no knowledge giving me at this time, Through hidden virtue which from her came forth, Of ancient love felt now the potent worth.

As soon as on my vision smote sublime The heavenly influence that, ere boyhood's days Had fled, had thrilled me and awoke my praise, Unto the leftward turned I, with that trust Wherewith a little child his mother seeks, When fear his steps controls, and tear-stained cheeks,

To say to Vergil: "All my blood such gust Of feeling moves as doth man's bravery tame; I feel the traces of the ancient flame."

_Wilstach's Translation, Paradiso, Canto x.x.x._

THE EXQUISITE BEAUTY OF BEATRICE.

While Dante and Beatrice rose from the Heaven of Primal Motion to the Empyrean, the poet turned his dazzled eyes from the heavens, whose sight he could no longer bear, to the contemplation of Beatrice.

Wherefore my love, and loss of other view, Me back to Beatrice and her homage drew.

If what of her hath been already said Were in one single eulogy grouped, 't would ill Her meed of merit at this moment fill.

The beauty which in her I now beheld B'yond mortals goes; her Maker, I believe, Hath power alone its fulness to receive.

Myself I own by obstacles stronger spelled Than in his labored theme was ever bard Whose verses, light or grave, brought problems hard; For, as of eyes quelled by the sun's bright burst, E'en so the exquisite memory of that smile Doth me of words and forming mind beguile.

Not from that day when on this earth I first Her face beheld, up to this moment, song Have I e'er failed to strew her path along, But now I own my limping numbers lame; An artist sometimes finds his powers surpa.s.sed, And mine succ.u.mbs to beauty's lance at last.

And I must leave her to a greater fame Than any that my trumpet gives, which sounds, Now, hastening notes, which mark this labor's bounds.

_Wilstach's Translation, Paradiso, Canto x.x.x._

THE ORLANDO FURIOSO.

Ludovico Ariosto, author of the Orlando Furioso was born in Reggio, Italy, Sept. 8, 1474. In 1503 he was taken into the service of the Cardinal Hippolito d'Este, and soon after began the composition of the Orlando Furioso, which occupied him for eleven years. It was published in 1516, and brought him immediate fame. Ariosto was so unkindly treated by his patron that he left him and entered the service of the cardinal's brother, Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. By him he was appointed governor of a province, in which position he repressed the banditti by whom it was infested, and after a successful administration of three years, returned to Ferrara to reside. The latter part of his life was spent in writing comedies and satires, and in revising the Orlando Furioso. He died in Ferrara, June 6, 1533.

The Orlando Furioso is a sequel to Boiardo's Orlando Innamorata, Ariosto taking up the story at the end of that poem. Its historical basis is the wars of Charlemagne with the Moors, which were probably confused with those of Charles Martel. As the Orlando of the poem is the same Roland whose fall at Roncesvalles in 778 is celebrated in the Song of Roland, its events must have occurred before that time.

Although the poem is called Orlando Furioso, Orlando's madness occupies a very small part of it, the princ.i.p.al threads of the story being Orlando's love for Angelica and his consequent madness, the wars of Charlemagne, and the loves of Bradamant and Rogero. From this Rogero the family of Este claimed to be derived, and for this reason Ariosto made Rogero the real hero of the poem, and took occasion to lavish the most extravagant praises upon his patron and his family.

With these princ.i.p.al threads are interwoven innumerable episodes which are not out of place in the epic, and lend variety to a story which would otherwise have become tiresome. The lightness of treatment, sometimes approaching ridicule, the rapidity of movement, the grace of style, and the clearness of language, the atmosphere created by the poet which so successfully harmonizes all his tales of magic and his occasional inconsistencies, and the excellent descriptions, have all contributed to the popularity of the poem, which is said to be the most widely read of the epics. These descriptions outweigh its faults,--the taking up the story of Boiardo without an explanation of the situation, the lack of unity, and the failure to depict character; for with the exception of Bradamant and Rogero, Ariosto's heroes and heroines are very much alike, and their conversation is exceedingly tiresome.

The Furioso is written in the octave stanza, and originally consisted of forty cantos, afterwards increased to forty-six.

The poem is the work of a practical poet, one who could govern a province.