Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/91

 That since no gate led, by God's will, To Florence, but the one whereat The priests and money-changers sat, He still would wander: for that still, Even through the body's prison-bars, His soul possessed the sun and stars."

These and the majestic lines which follow them as comment have the heart of that letter in them; the letter which we living now cannot read without the sense of a double bitterness and sweetness in its sacred speech, so lamentably and so gloriously applicable to the loftiest heir of Dante's faith and place; of his faith as patriot, of his place as exile. It seems that the same price is still fixed for them to pay who have to buy with it the inheritance of sun and stars and the sweetest truths, and all generations of time, and the love and thanks and passionate remembrance of all faithful men for ever.

This poem is sustained throughout at the fit height with the due dignity; nothing feeble or jarring disturbs its equality of exultation. The few verses of bitter ardour which brand as a prostitute the commonweal which has become a common wrong, the common goddess deformed into a common harlot, show a force of indignant imagination worthy of a great poetic satirist, of Byron and Hugo in their worst wrath. The brief pictures of the courtly life at Verona between women and rhymesters, jester and priests, have a living outline and colour; and the last words have the weight in them of time's own sentence.

Eat and wash hands, Can Grande;—scarce We know their deeds now: hands which fed Our Dante with that bitter bread;