"It was the hour when every traveller
And every watchman at the gate of towns
Begins to long for sleep, and drowsiness
Is falling even on the mother's eyes
Whose child is dead."
Also Byron, Don Juan, III. 108 :--
"Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts
the heart
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day
When they from their sweet friends are torn
apart;
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way,
As the far bell of vesper makes him start,
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay.
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns!"
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."
"Te lucis ante terminum,
Rerurn creator, poscimus
Ut pro tua clementia
Sis presul ad custodiam.
Procul recedant somnia
Et noxium phantasmata,
Hostemque nostrum comprime,
Ne polluantur corpora.
Presta, Pater piissime,
Patrique compar Unice,
Cum Spiritu Paraclito
Regnans per omne saeculum."
This hymn would seem to have no great applicability to disembodied spirits; and perhaps may bave the same reference as the last petition in the Lord's Prayer, Canto XI. 19:--
"Our virtue, which is easily o'ercome.
Put not to proof with the old Adversary,
But thou from him who spurs it so, deliver.
Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen,
Among thick-woven arborets, and flowers
Imbordered on each bank.
Not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape
And lovely; never since of serpent-kind
Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed
Hermione and Cadmus, or the god
In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed
Ammonian Jove or Capitoline was seen,--
He with Olympias, this with her who bore
Scipio, the height of Rome. With track oblique
At first, as one who sought access, but feared
To interrupt, sidelong he works his way.
As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought
Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the wind
Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail
So varied he, and of his tortuous train
Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve.
Oft he bowed
His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck,
Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod."
"The Magra, that with journey short
"The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies."
Doth from the Tuscan part the Genoese."
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 08.118
Currado or Conrad Malaspina, father of Marcello Malaspina, who six years later sheltered Dante in his exile, as foreshadowed in line 136. It was from the convent of the Corvo, overlooking the Gulf of Spezia, in Lunigiana, that Frate Ilario wrote the letter describing Dante's appearance in the cloister. See Illustrations at the end of Inferno.
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 08.131
Pope Boniface the Eighth.
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 08.134
Before the sun shall be seven times in Aries, or before seven years are passed.
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 08.137
Ecclesiastes, xii. II:
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 08.139
With this canto ends the first day in Purgatory, as indicated by the description of evening at the beginning, and the rising of the stars in line 89. With it closes also the first subdivision of this part of the poem, indicated, as the reader will not fail to notice, by the elaborate introduction of the next canto.