Dante honors the shorter and more ungainly tower, by likening to it Antæus, who was but a son of the clod himself. Prima found the passage in the Inferno, and read it to us:
“Qual pare a riguardar la Carisenda
Sotto’l chinato, quando un nuvol vada
Sovr’ essa si, ch’ella in contrario penda;
Tal parve Anteo a me, che stava a bada
Di vederlo chinare:—”
A less mellifluous rhyme arose to English-speaking lips in surveying the incomplete shaft:
“If I was so soon done for,
I wonder what I was begun for.”
When the unstable foundations became an admitted fact, why were not the Asinelli and Garisenda torn down and built upon firmer ground, or the materials otherwise appropriated?