Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/479

Rh chanting, while the heavens were yet glowing with golden sunset; and there:—

Over the roof o' the lighted church I looked A bowshot to the street's end, north away Out of the Roman gate to the Roman road By the river, till I felt the Apennine."

And there and thence, already on that evening and night of the first day, the inert stuff fused into white heat, bloom-furnaced, in "the inexhaustible fire of his imagination," not then restless, but settled into a most steadfast, intense, irresistible burning, it was given him to see plainly, "in clear dream and solemn vision," all the scenes and actions and personages of the long-buried tragedy. In my narrow range of literature I know not any instance, not in Shakespeare or Shelley, not in Dante or Leopardi, not in Blake undiseased or Browning's own "Saul," more impressive and authentic of rapt prophetical possession and inspiration, the radiant trance whose sight pierces and strains into foresight, than is revealed in the marvellous passage from line 500 to line 660 in the first section, which bears the title of the whole poem. After full study and absorption of this overmastering vision, which was also pre-vision, one is prepared for whatever of astonishing the mass of the work may consist of or contain. Here is the opening of the vision:—

And there would lie Arezzo, the man's town, The woman's trap and cage and torture-place, Also the stage where the priest played his part, A spectacle for angels,—ay, indeed, There lay Arezzo! Farther then I fared, Feeling my way on through the hot and dense,