Of which this rude paraphrase may serve as a translation:--
The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the Stream of Fire, the Pit,
In vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit;
But since my soul, an alien here, hath flown to nobler wars,
And, happier now, hath gone to seek its Maker 'mid the stars,
Here am I Dante shut, exiled from the ancestral shore,
Whom Florence, the of all least-loving mother, bore.[37]
If these be not the words of Dante, what is internal evidence worth? The
indomitably self-reliant man, loyal first of all to his most unpopular
convictions (his very host, Guido, being a Guelph), puts his Ghibellinism
(_jura monarchiae_) in the front. The man whose whole life, like that of
selected souls always, had been a war fare, calls heaven another camp,--a
better one, thank God! The wanderer of so many years speaks of his soul
as a guest,--glad to be gone, doubtless. The exile, whose sharpest
reproaches of Florence are always those of an outraged lover, finds it
bitter that even his unconscious bones should lie in alien soil.
Giovanni Villani, the earliest authority, and a contemporary, thus
sketches him: "This man was a great scholar in almost every science,
though a layman; was a most excellent poet, philosopher, and rhetorician;
perfect, as well in composing and versifying as in haranguing; a most
noble speaker.
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