and then the famous colophon which nobody can translate:
“Ci falt la Geste que Turoldus declinet.”
Clearly, if Turoldus made the Song of Roland, he did not put his colophon just there. Mr. Chesterton, in an introduction to the very accomplished version of the song made by Captain Scott-Moncrieff, devotes some eloquent lines to its defence; but he does it at the expense of criticism. It will not do. A poet is, after all, a man singing to, or writing for men. No man in the world would end a long story by beginning another. These things are not done.
The ending of the Divine Comedy is original and characteristic at once. There is deliberate art in it; there is a kind of artifice or trick in it. But the trick is justified because it is both beautiful and, philosophically, true. Each of the three canticas ends with the same word and the same thought. The aim of the pilgrim through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven is to reach the stars. From the darkness and lamentation of Hell he issues
“a riveder le stelle”;
after his painful climbing of the Mount of Purgation he finds himself
“Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle”;
the Paradise begins by describing the glory of the Prime Mover of things; and ends by discovering that this Prime Mover of the universe is Love, and that Love it is which
“muove il sole e l’altre stelle.”