“During my visit here, I have passed many delightful
hours in reading Italian poetry, and have had great pleasure in tracing the
similarity of sentiment which exists between minds of a similar character, that
derive their chief happiness from the exercise of warm and exalted affections;
till at length I have convinced myself that there is a community of feeling
amongst them wholly independent of chance or circumstance, presence or absence,
time or place. Of this I could adduce many beautiful illustrations; but at
present I shall only refer to a little detached piece of the celebrated
Dante, in which he seems to have
sketched the first idea of his Beatrice,
whom he has also introduced in his ‘Paradiso’ as his guide through the
celestial regions, and whom he appears to have regarded with a warmth and
delicacy of passion far beyond what is found in the writings of any other poet,
even of Petrarca himself.
| LIFE OF WILLIAM ROSCOE. | 247 |
“‘Of loveliest feature and of lightest form, A stranger here, to glad your sight I come, With interview of heaven—pleas’d to perform The task assign’d—then seek my native home— Scattering delight where’er my course I bend, That whoso sees me, and refrains from love, Of love is all insensible,—for when Nature, from Him whose gracious will did send Me here, entreated I might be, oh! then To perfect me with beauty all things strove: The stars rain’d lustre in my eyes, that beam’d With mild attemper’d light, and heavenly charms In earthly mould were first to mortals shown: Yet not alike on all this radiance flam’d; His heart alone the glow celestial warms, Who from another’s bliss derives his own.’— This sentence once ’t was mine to trace, Bright beaming from an angel’s face, But by too ardent passion fir’d I nearly at the sight expir’d; Nor for the deep and hopeless wound, Sent from those eyes of heavenly blue— By one whose power too well I knew, Have I as yet a balsam found.” |
