Poor is the comfort
There’s ever someone lives although ourselves be dead.[47]
Something more than this, more even than “the thought of what was” is demanded for the satisfaction of the soul, yet this is all the Greek has to offer to his correspondent.
Before leaving this section of the poem, one further comparison of striking interest claims at least a brief consideration—a comparison also of the life of the man of action with that of the man of thought: of Salinguerra, the Ghibelline leader and Sordello, the poet and dreamer, Ghibelline by antecedents, Guelph by conviction; the visionary and dreamer, but the dreamer whose dreams should remain a legacy to posterity, the visionary who held that “the poet must be earth’s essential king.” The comparison is especially interesting, since in this case also it is drawn (Bk. iv) by the poet himself. To Sordello, however, the recognition of a future existence has at times a very potent influence upon the present. For him, moreover, in his moments of insight, service not happiness, is the inspiration of life. Lofty as is the estimation in which he holds the office of poet, he yet deems Salinguerra
One of happier fate, and all I should have done,
He does; the people’s good being paramount
With him.[48]
Here is
A nature made to serve, excel
In serving, only feel by service well![49]
To the poet of the Middle Ages then, as to the Greek, though for different reasons, the man of action has the happier fate. But where the Greek shudders before the approach of death, the Italian issues triumphantly from the final struggle of life—the supreme temptation—through the realization
That death, I fly, revealed
So oft a better life this life concealed,
And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path
Have hunted fearlessly.[50]
Only he would crave the consciousness which served as inspiration to sage, champion, martyr, and he, too, will hunt death fearlessly, will demand, “Let what masters life disclose itself!”