"'So may thy kindred find repose, as thou Shalt loose a knot which hath entangled me!' Thus I adjured him:--'ye foresee what time (If rightly I have heard) will bring to pass, But to the present, otherwise, are blind.' "'We see, like him who hath an evil eye, Far distant things,' said he; 'so highest God Enlightens us: but yet, when they approach, Or when they are, our intellect falls short; Nor can we know, save by report from others, Aught of the state of man beneath the sun. Hence may'st thou comprehend how all our knowledge Shall cease for ever from the point that shuts The portal of the future.'[24] "At that moment Compunction smote me for my recent fault, And I cried out--'Oh! tell that fallen one, His son is yet among the living.--Say, That if I falter'd to reply at first With that assurance, 'twas because my thoughts Were harass'd by the doubt which thou hast solved.'"[25] The reader of these lines (however inferior the translation may be), cannot have failed to perceive by what natural action and speech the paternal anxiety of Cavalcante respecting his son is indicated. On his bed of torture he hears a voice which he knows to be that of his son's friend; he starts up, looks eagerly about, as expecting to see that son; but observing the friend only, he at once interrupts the dialogue with Farinata, and in broken exclamations enquires concerning him. Dante happening to employ the past tense of a verb in reference to what his "Guido" might have done, the miserable parent instantly lays hold of that minute circumstance as an intimation of his death, and asks questions of which he dreads the answers, precisely in the manner of Macduff when he learns that his wife and children had been murdered by Macbeth. The poet hesitating to reply. Cavalcante takes the worst for granted, falls back in despair, and appears not again. Thus, "Even from _his_ tomb the voice of Nature cries."