Now on its way the second quarter came

Of those twelve hours wherein the stars are

bright,

When Love was seen before me, in such
might,

As to remember shakes with awe my frame.
Suddenly came he, seeming glad, and keeping
My heart in hand; and in his arms he had
My Lady in a folded garment sleeping.

He waked her; and that heart all burning
bade

Her feed upon, in lowly guise and sad, Then from my view he turned; and parted, weeping." -Cary's Translation.

That dream has been interpreted by many, both in poetry and in art. Guido Cavalcante, among others of Dante's contemporaries, answered it in the following sonnet, and from thenceforward was a warm friend of the poet and is "the first of my friends," mentioned by him in the Commedia :

"Unto my thinking, thou beheld'st all worth,

All joy, as much of good as man may know,
If thou wert in his power who here below
Is honor's righteous lord throughout this earth.
Where evil dies, even there he has his birth,
Whose justice out of pity's self doth grow.
Softly to sleeping persons he will go,

And, with no pain to them, their hearts draw
forth.

1

Thy heart he took, as knowing well, alas! That death had claimed thy lady for a prey;

In fear thereof, he fed her with thy heart. But when he seemed in sorrow to depart, Sweet was thy dream, for by that sign, I say, Surely the opposite shall come to pass.

-Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

BEATA BEATRIX.

"And was it thine, the light whose radiance shed

Love's halo round the gloom of Dante's brow? Was thine the hand that touched his hand, and

thou

The spirit to his inmost spirit wed?

O gentle, O most pure, what shall be said

In praise of thee to whom Love's minstrels

bow?

O heart that held his heart forever now
Thou with his glory shall be garlanded.
Lo, 'mid the twilight of the waning years,
Firenze claims once more our love, our tears;
But thou, triumphant on the throne of song-
By Mary seated in the realm above-

O give us of that gift than death more strong,
The loving spirit that won Dante's love."
-Samuel Waddington.

"Dante once prepared to paint an angel: Whom to please? You whisper, 'Beatrice.' While he mused and traced it and retraced it,

(Peradventure with a pen corroded

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
When, his left-hand in the hair o' the wicked,
Back he held the brow, and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the wretch go festering through Florence),
Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante, standing, studying his angel,—
In there broke the folk of his Inferno.
Says he, 'Certain people of importance'
(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)
'Entered and would seize the poet.'

Says the poet, 'Then I stopped my painting.'

You and I will never see that picture.
While he mused on love and Beatrice,
While he softened o'er his outlined angel,
In they broke, those 'People of importance,'
We and Bice the loss forever.'

-Robert Browning.

ON THE "VITA NUOVA" OF DANTE.

"As he that loves oft looks on the dear form And guesses how it grew to womanhood, And gladly would have watched the beauties bud

And the mild fire of precious life wax warmSo I, long bound within the threefold charm