"Danzando al loro angelico carribo."
If this be correct, carribo cannot signify "a dance," but rather "the song which accompanies the dance"; and the true sense of the passage will have been best rendered by Mr. Cary. [49]
Whenever Mr. Longfellow's translation is kept free from oddities of diction and construction, it is very animated and vigorous. Nothing can be finer than his rendering of "Purgatorio," Canto VI., lines 97-117:—
"O German Albert! who abandonest
Her that has grown recalcitrant and savage,
And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow,
May a just judgment from the stars down fall
Upon thy blood, and be it new and open,
That thy successor may have fear thereof:
Because thy father and thyself have suffered,
By greed of those transalpine lands distrained,
The garden of the empire to be waste.
Come and behold Montecchi and Cappelletti,
Monaldi and Filippeschi, careless man!
Those sad already, and these doubt-depressed!
Come, cruel one! come and behold the oppression
Of thy nobility, and cure their wounds,
And thou shalt see how safe [?] is Santafiore.
Come and behold thy Rome that is lamenting,
Widowed, alone, and day and night exclaims
'My Caesar, why hast thou forsaken me?'
Come and behold how loving are the people;
And if for us no pity moveth thee,
Come and be made ashamed of thy renown." [50]
So, too, Canto III., lines 79-84:—
"As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold
By ones, and twos, and threes, and the others stand
Timidly holding down their eyes and nostrils,
And what the foremost does the others do
Huddling themselves against her if she stop,
Simple and quiet, and the wherefore know not." [51]
Francesca's exclamation to Dante is thus rendered by Mr. Longfellow:—
"And she to me: There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery." [52]
This is admirable,—full of the true poetic glow, which would have been utterly quenched if some Romanic equivalent of dolore had been used instead of our good Saxon sorrow. [53] So, too, the "Paradiso," Canto I., line 100:—
"Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh,
Her eyes directed toward me with that look
A mother casts on a delirious child." [54]
"And she to me: The mightiest of all woes
Is in the midst of misery to be cursed
With bliss remembered."