Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom,
By all those ways, by all the expedients,
Whereby thou hast the power of doing it.
Preserve towards me thy magnificence
So that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed
Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body."
Norton says: "It is needful to know Dante as a man in order fully to
appreciate him as poet."
What manner of man then was he? Redeemed by love, he was, to quote John
Addington Symonds, "the greatest, truest, sincerest man of modern
Europe."
DANTE'S INFERNO
DANTE'S INFERNO
At no period of modern times do we find that literature showed an
interest more keen in the Hereafter than at the present day. Religion
has always used both pen and voice to direct men's thoughts towards
eternity, but now it is literature that goes for subject-matter to
religion. This change of attitude is due, no doubt, to the fact that
several factors in present-day life--factors that literature cannot
ignore, have turned popular thought to religion. The World-war has
disciplined the character of men by the unspeakable experiences of
contact with shot, shell and shrapnel and the result has been that
countless numbers have turned to religion for strength and consolation.
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