DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0117
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
9?
now drawing wondering looks after him in the narrow
mediaeval streets ; always alone, always with his lofty head
in the clouds, and a shadowy crowd moving about with
him ; yet with those glowing eyes so quick to see, that here
and there at the highest of his dreaming a sudden gleam
of the landscape about him would break into paradise
itself, or light a gloomy circle of the “Inferno” with the
reflection of some mortal scene. And he had been but an
imperfect man ; not always so high in heart and mean-
ing as in genius, fiercely serving the purposes of hatred or
vengeance when that angry humor took him ; revenging his
wrongs or the wrongs of his country with sudden fiery
stroke, as by some indignant angel, and dropping the
enemy into hopeless hell, to writhe there henceforward for-
ever—let commentators do what they will to clear him.
iNor was Dante always so spotless as became Beatrice’s
lover; an impassioned soul, never satisfied, sometimes des-
perate, torn out of his true place in life, storming and toil-
ing to regain it, unconquerable in passion, in power, in
energy—how was he to keep himself spotless in all those
wearinesses and wanderings, those indignations and
wrongs ? But the animo sdegnoso had at last come to a
moment of rest; when his great work was completed, he
took to “ vulgarizing ” those psalms in which the Chris-
tian soul has always loved to breathe its penitence, and the
Credo, and Paternoster, and others of the chief utterances
of Divine truth.
“ Aggi pietade de’ miei gravi errori
Perd ch’ io sono debile ed infermo
Ed ho perduti tutti i miei vigori.”
These are not the mighty verses of the “ Divine Comedy
but in the evening quiet, in the stillness, with faint echoes
of the alien sea breathing through the Pineta, and great
Florence and greater life growing dim in the far distance,
how touching are they, like the sound of that distant bell,
9?
now drawing wondering looks after him in the narrow
mediaeval streets ; always alone, always with his lofty head
in the clouds, and a shadowy crowd moving about with
him ; yet with those glowing eyes so quick to see, that here
and there at the highest of his dreaming a sudden gleam
of the landscape about him would break into paradise
itself, or light a gloomy circle of the “Inferno” with the
reflection of some mortal scene. And he had been but an
imperfect man ; not always so high in heart and mean-
ing as in genius, fiercely serving the purposes of hatred or
vengeance when that angry humor took him ; revenging his
wrongs or the wrongs of his country with sudden fiery
stroke, as by some indignant angel, and dropping the
enemy into hopeless hell, to writhe there henceforward for-
ever—let commentators do what they will to clear him.
iNor was Dante always so spotless as became Beatrice’s
lover; an impassioned soul, never satisfied, sometimes des-
perate, torn out of his true place in life, storming and toil-
ing to regain it, unconquerable in passion, in power, in
energy—how was he to keep himself spotless in all those
wearinesses and wanderings, those indignations and
wrongs ? But the animo sdegnoso had at last come to a
moment of rest; when his great work was completed, he
took to “ vulgarizing ” those psalms in which the Chris-
tian soul has always loved to breathe its penitence, and the
Credo, and Paternoster, and others of the chief utterances
of Divine truth.
“ Aggi pietade de’ miei gravi errori
Perd ch’ io sono debile ed infermo
Ed ho perduti tutti i miei vigori.”
These are not the mighty verses of the “ Divine Comedy
but in the evening quiet, in the stillness, with faint echoes
of the alien sea breathing through the Pineta, and great
Florence and greater life growing dim in the far distance,
how touching are they, like the sound of that distant bell,