DANTE’S PURGATORIO.
CANTO SECOND.
This Canto of the Purgatorio is the one which contains that episode of the music-master, Casella, to which Milton alludes in his celebrated Sonnet to Henry Lawes, and perhaps all the more celebrated from this allusion to the passage in Dante.
Casella was a dear friend of Dante’s, and used to set his canzoni to music, and sing them with a voice which it must have been delicious for Dante to have made immortal. Dante supposes in the poem that Casella had gone to Rome in the year of the Jubilee, and, coming thence by sea, had perished near the mouth of the Tiber.
For Canto I. of this translation, see Catholic World for November, 1870.
Now that horizon whose meridian arch
Hangs o’er Jerusalem its topmost height
The sun had reached: while opposite, her march
Holding in countercourse, the circling Night
Walked forth from Ganges, bearing in her hand
The Scales that she lets fall with her advance,
So that the morning’s cheeks where I did stand
From white and red grew orange to my glance.
Beside the sea we made a brief delay,
Like lingering men, that on their journey dream,
Who go in spirit, but in body stay:
And lo! as when, surprised by morning’s beam,
Through the gross vapors Mars doth redly burn
Down in the west upon the ocean floor;
A light appeared—oh! may that light return—
So rapidly those waters travelling o’er,
That to its motion flying were but slow:
Then, having momently withdrawn my gaze
To question of my Guide, I looked, and lo!
Larger it burned, and seemed almost ablaze!
Soon from each side thereof, although I knew
Naught what they were, something appeared of white,
And underneath another of like hue
Little by little grew upon my sight.
My Master spake not: I meantime could spell
Wings in those first white objects at the side:
Soon as he recognized the pilot well,
“Behold God’s Angel!—bend thy knees!” he cried:
“Lift up thy palms to him—now in thy ken
See one of heaven’s high ministers indeed!
Look, how he scorneth all device of men;
He nor of oars nor any sail hath need
Save his own pinions (while he beats the air
And heavenward stretches those eternal pens),
From shore to shore so distant—plumes that ne’er
Moult like the changing tresses that are men’s.”