[Footnote 20: 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."] [Footnote 21: "Ma vedi là un'anima, ch'a posta, Sola soletta verso noi riguarda; Quella ne 'nsegnerà la via più tosta Venimmo a lei:--O anima Lombarda! Come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa, E nel mover degli occhi onesta e tarda! Ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa; Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando A guisa di leon, quando si posa. Pur Virgilio si trasse a lei, pregando, Che ne mostrasse la miglior salita; E quella non rispose al suo dimando, Ma di nostro paese, e della vita Cinchiese; e 'l dolce duca incominciava, 'Mantova'--e l'ombra tutta in se romita, Surse ver lui del luogo, ove 'pria stava, Dicendo, 'O Mantovano! io son Sordello Della tua terra; e l'un l'altro abbracciava."] [Footnote 22: Alluding, it is supposed, to the fact that Guido had forsaken poetry for philosophy, or preferred the latter so much above the former, as to think lightly of Virgil himself in comparison with Aristotle.] [Footnote 23: He foretells Dante's own expulsion from his country within fifty months.] [Footnote 24: The end of time, when their tombs were to be closed up.]