The Comedy of Dante Alighieri Author:Dante Alighieri 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: Bearded in luxury and leisure cast. And that with short flat nose, in counsel held With him who has the aspect so benign, Dies flying, and the lily's flowers dis... more »join. Behold him there, see how he beats his breast; And see the other how he rests his cheek Upon his palm, sighing as heart would break : Father, father-in-law of bane of France— They know his life, so vicious, so debased, And hence their grief—the sharp and bitter taste. He who looks hardy, who accords in song With him whose nose is high and masculine, With every virtue girdled round his rein, Had there succeeded after him, as king, The youth behind, successive virtue known, From vessel then to vessel had been drawn, Which cannot of the other heirs be said. Giacopo, Frederigo, the realms possess, Neither can say the other is the less. Rarely shoots merit up into the boughs, Or human worth ; and such the will of Him, That from the Donor they should seem to come. To the short flat nose, (no less than Piero, Who joins his song,) these words of mine apply, Who move now Pulia's and Provenza's sigh. So much less plant is than the parent seed, The less that Beatrice and Margaret, The more Costanza boasts her husband yet. Behold the king of simple life alone— Harry of England ! This one's issue grows To better promise in his upward boughs. He lower than the rest, and near the ground, And looking down, 's Marquis Guglielmo ; Alexandria, and the war and woe, Makes Monferrato, Cavanese, weep." CANTO VIII. It was the hour when voyager returns In thought, his heart returning tender too, To pleasant friends, the day he bade adien, When the new traveller is struck with love, If he should hear the sound, though far away, Which seems as if it wept the dying day : When I began to find my hearing vain, Inte...« less