Page:Corinne - L. E. L.pdf/4

Yet less irrevocable seem’d that past,
Than their eternal future.

    Methinks that Dante, banish'd his own soil,
Bore to imagined worlds his actual grief,
Ever his shades inquire the things of life,
And ask’d the poet of his native land;
And from his exile did he paint a hell.
In his eyes Florence set her stamp on all;
The ancient dead seem'd Tuscans like himself:
Not that his power was bounded, but his strength;
And his great mind forced all the universe
Within the circle of its thought.

    A mystic chain of circles and of spheres
Led him from Hell to Purgatory; thence
From Purgatory into Paradise:
Faithful historian of his glorious dream,
He fills with light the regions most obscure;
The world created in his triple song
Is brilliant, and complete, and animate,
Like a new planet seen within the sky.

    All upon earth doth change to poetry
Beneath his voice: the objects, the ideas,
The laws, and all the strange phenomena,
Seem like a new Olympus with new Gods,—
Fancy's mythology,—which disappears
Like Pagan creeds at sight of paradise,
That sea of light, radiant with shining stars,
And love, and virtue.

    The magic words of our most noble bard
Are like the prism of the universe;—
Her marvels there reflect themselves, divide,
And recreate her wonders; sounds paint hues,
And colours melt in harmony. The rhyme—
Sounding or strange, and rapid or prolong’d—
That charm of genius, triumph of high art;
Poetry's divination, which reveals
All nature's secrets, such as influence
The heart of man.

    From this great work did Dante hope the end
Of his long exile; and he called on Fame
To be his mediator: but he died
Too soon to reap the laurels of his land.
Thus wastes the transitory life of man