By this short speech the course to enter on, They had no longer brooked restraining word. Turning our poop to where the morning shone We of the oars made wings for our mad flight, Still tending left the further we had gone. And of the other pole I saw at night Now all the stars; and 'neath the watery plain Our own familiar heavens were lost to sight. Five times afresh had kindled, and again 130 The moon's face earthward was illumed no more, Since out we sailed upon the mighty main;[685] Then we beheld a lofty mountain[686] soar, Dim in the distance; higher, as I thought, By far than any I had seen before. We joyed; but with despair were soon distraught When burst a whirlwind from the new-found world And the forequarter of the vessel caught. With all the waters thrice it round was swirled; At the fourth time the poop, heaved upward, rose, 140 The prow, as pleased Another,[687] down was hurled; And then above us did the ocean close.' FOOTNOTES: [668] _Whence I ashamed, etc._: There is here a sudden change from irony to earnest. 'Five members of great Florentine families, eternally engaged among themselves in their shameful metamorphoses--nay, but it is too sad!' [669] _Toward the morning, etc._: There was a widespread belief in the greater truthfulness of dreams dreamed as the night wears away. See _Purg._ ix. 13. The dream is Dante's foreboding of what is to happen to Florence. Of its truth he has no doubt, and the only question is how soon will it be answered by the fact. Soon, he says, if it is near to the morning that we dream true dreams--morning being the season of waking reality in which dreams are accomplished. [670] _Even Prato_: A small neighbouring city, much under the influence of Florence, and somewhat oppressed by it. The commentators reckon up the disasters that afflicted Florence in the first years of the fourteenth century, between the date of Dante's journey and the time he wrote--fires, falls of bridges, and civil strife. But such misfortunes were too much in keeping with the usual course of Florentine history to move Dante thus deeply in the retrospect; and as he speaks here in his own person the 'soon' is more naturally counted from the time at which he writes than from the date assigned by him to his pilgrimage. He is looking forward to the period when his own return in triumph to Florence was to be prepared by grievous national reverses; and, as a patriot, he feels that he cannot be wholly reconciled by his private advantage to the public misfortune. But it was all only a dream. [671] _Some while ago_: See note, _Inf._ xxiv. 79.