“And like a morning beam, wake to him every morrow.”]
‘Paulo’s growing passion for Francesca is described with equal delicacy and insight into the sophistry of the human heart. He is represented as first concealing his attachment from himself; then struggling with it; then yielding to it.
[“Till ’twas the food and habit day by day,” to
“’Twas but the taste of what was natural.”]
‘But we hasten on to the principal event and the catastrophe of the poem. The scene of the fatal meeting between the lovers is laid in the gardens of the palace, which are here described with the utmost elegance and beauty.
[“So now you walked beside an odorous bed,” to
“A summer-house so fine in such a nest of green.”]
‘Such is the landscape:—now for the figures.
[“All the green garden, flower-bed, shade and plot,” to
“To ask the good King Arthur for assistance.”]