Note 20 — CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA.
Reading edition
Lord Byron, in his poem, "The Prophecy of Dante," (canto II.) has the following noble apostrophe, which, as it refers to the subject of the foregoing paragraph, and affords a fine English specimen of the terze rime, in which the Divina Commedia is composed, cannot be more opportunely introduced than in this place:—
"Italia! ah! to me such things, foreshown With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget In thine irreparable wrongs my own: We can have but one country.—and even yet Thou'rt mine—my bones shall be within thy breast, My soul within thy language, which once set With our old Roman sway in the wide West; But I will make another tongue arise As lofty and more sweet, in which exprest The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs, Shall find alike such sounds for every theme, That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realise a poet's proudest dream, And make thee Europe's nightingale of song; So that all present speech to thine shall seem The note of meaner birds, and every tongue Confess its barbarism when compared with thine. This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong. The Tuscan Bard, the banish'd Ghibelline."