"Then, turning round to them, I thus began: 'Francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes: My pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman; But tell me,--in the time of happy sighs, Your vague desires how gave Love utterance first?" And she to me: "The mightiest of all woes Is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed With bliss remembered,--this thy teacher knows. Yet, wouldst thou learn our passion's root and head, As one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim, So will I speak. Together once we read The tale of Lancelot,--how Love bound him. Alone we were without suspecting aught: Oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue, And oft our eyes each other's glances caught; But one sole passage 't was which both o'erthrew. At reading of the longed-for smile,--to be By such a lover's kissing so much blest, This dearest--never shalt thou part from me! His lips to mine, to mine, all trembling, pressed. The writer was our Galeot with his book:-- That day we read no further on." She stopped: Meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took My sense away, and like a corse I dropped. Observe that Dr. Parsons has put Dante's twenty-eight lines of eleven syllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables; and this without losing a drop of the precious stream he undertakes to pour. But why does he make Francesca address her companion personally, instead of saying, "who shall never part from me?" And why does Mr. Dayman say, "pious drops," instead of piteous? Mr. Dayman and Mr. Longfellow fill up the twenty-eight lines. In neither of the three is there any strain or wresting of the sense. But all three, and before them Lord Byron and Carey, mistranslate this passage,-- "Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura." All these translators interpret it to mean, that while they read, their eyes often met; whereas Dante says, they read that passage over more than once; or, literally rendered, several times that reading or passage drew to it their eyes. To restore the meaning of the original adds to the refinement of the scene.