whence comes the sound, dreary and dull, of dying warriors' sighs;
and yet no commentator seems to become so transformed as Carducci into Dante's own being and manner when contemplating and describing him. The poem on Dante, beginning with the words [XXXIII]:
Forte sembianze di novella vita,
recalls, in its statuesque strength and supple beauty, Michael Angelo's “Sleeping Slave.” It breathes all through with the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. In the narrative of Dante's secret heart-life and soul-life it seems as if we were turning new leaves of La Vita Nova rather than those of a nineteenth-century critic. No voice but Dante's seems to speak in lines like these, describing the first awaking of the passion of love in the youthful poet's heart:
Sighing and pensive, yet with locks aglow
With rosy splendour from another air,
Love made long stay:
And such the gentle things
He talked to thee with bashful lips: so sweetly
He entered all the chambers of thy heart