PREFACE.
Is not the reason why the Divine Comedy is called a “world poem” to be found in these significant facts: it portrays the sudden awakening of a human soul to the consciousness of having gone astray; it shows the loathsome nature of sin; it pictures the struggle necessary to be freed from sin; it emphasizes that God is ready to help as soon as the soul is ready to be helped; and at last it declares that the Vision of God will come to the soul which perseveres in the struggle? These are the essential truths which make the great poem of Dante one of the masterpieces of the world of art. May not it—as well as all other truly great things—be given to little children in a simple way?
THE VISION OF DANTE.
WANT to tell a wonderful story to you, dear children. It has been told over and over again for six hundred years, yet people keep reading it, and re-reading it, and wise men never tire of studying it. Many great artists have painted pictures, and sculptors have made statues, and musicians have composed operas, and clergymen have written sermons from thoughts inspired by it. A great poet first gave it to the world in the form of a grand poem which some day you may read, but I will try to tell it to you to-day as a short story. I am afraid that you would go to sleep if I should undertake to read the poem to you. You do not yet know enough about life to understand it.
Once upon a time, very long ago, there was a man whose name was Dante. He had done wrong and had wandered a long way from his home. He does not tell us how or why. He begins by saying that he had gone to sleep in a great forest. Suddenly he awoke, and tried to find his way out of it, first by one path and then another; but all in vain.