Lo di ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio;

E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore."

A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, indeed, worthy to
be the voice of Evening herself.

'Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.

Every body knows the line in Gray's Elegy, not unworthily echoed from
Dante's--

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."

Nothing can equal, however, the _tone_ in the Italian original,--the

"Paia 'l giorno pianger the si muore."

Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his
personal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have
left us a work truly to be called Divine?]

[Footnote 17:

"Te lucis ante terminum;"--a hymn sung at evening service.]

[Footnote 18: Lucy, _Lucia_ (supposed to be derived from _lux, lucis_),
is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman Catholic
countries may be said to preside over _light_, and who is really invoked
in maladies of the eyes. She was Dante's favourite saint, possibly for
that reason among others, for he had once hurt his eyes with study, and
they had been cured. In her spiritual character she represents the light
of grace.]

[Footnote 19: The first step typifies consciousness of sin; the second,
horror of it; the third, zeal to amend.]

[Footnote 20: The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the
commentators to mean power to absolve; the silver, the learning and
judgment requisite to use it.]

[Footnote 21: "Te Deum laudamus," the well-known hymn of St. Ambrose and
St. Augustine.]

[Footnote 22:

"Non v'accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
Nati a formar l'angelica farfalla,
Che vola a giustizia senza schermi?"

"Know you not, we are worms
Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms?"

[Footnote 23:

"Piu ridon le carte
Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese:
L'onore e tutto or suo, e mio in parte."

[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead);
the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem;
and the poet, who is to "chase them from the