Search -
Beacon Lights of History: Renaissance and reformation. 1884.
Beacon Lights of History Renaissance and reformation 1884 Author:John Lord Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: mortal, — even the adoration of his lamented and departed Beatrice. I wish to dwell for a moment, perhaps longer than to some may seem dignified, on this idea... more »l or sentimental love. It may seem trivial and unimportant to the eye of youth, or a man of the world, or a woman of sensual nature, or to unthinking fools and butterflies ; but it is invested with dignity to one who meditates on the mysteries of the soul, the wonders of our higher nature, — one of the things which arrest the attention of philosophers. It is recorded and attested, even by Dante himself, that at the early age of nine he fell in love with Beatrice, — a little girl of one of his neighbors, — and that he wrote to her sonnets as the mistress of his devotion. How could he have written sonnets without an inspiration, unless he felt sentiments higher than we associate with either boys or girls? The boy was father of the man. " She appeared to me," says the poet, " at a festival, dressed in that most noble and honorable color, scarlet, — girded and ornamented in a manner suitable to her age; and from that moment, love ruled my soul. And after many days had passed, it happened that, passing through the street, she turned her eyes to the spot where I stood, and with ineffable courtesy she greeted me; and this had such an effect on me that it seemed I had reached the furthest limitof blessedness. I took refuge in the solitude of my chamber; and, thinking over what had happened to me, I proposed to write a sonnet, since I had already acquired the art of putting words into rhyme." This, from his " Vita Nuova," his first work, relating to the "new life" which this love awoke in his young soul. Thus, according to Dante's own statement, was the seed of a never-ending passion planted in his soul, — the small beginning...« less