HKB
O'er all the sandy desert falling slow, Were shower'd dilated flakes of fire, like snow On Alpine summits, when the wind is low.--IBID.]
He delights in a local name and local image--the boiling pitch, and the clang of the shipwrights in the arsenal of Venice--the sepulchral fields of Arles and Pola--the hot-spring of Viterbo--the hooded monks of Cologne--the dykes of Flanders and Padua--the Maremma, with its rough brushwood, its wild boars, its snakes, and fevers. He had listened to the south wind among the pine tops, in the forest by the sea, at Ravenna. He had watched under the Carisenda tower at Bologna, and seen the driving clouds "give away their motion" to it, and make it seem to be falling; and had noticed how at Rome the October sun sets between Corsica and Sardinia.[40] His images of the sea are numerous and definite--the ship backing out of the tier in harbour, the diver plunging after the fouled anchor, the mast rising, the ship going fast before the wind, the water closing in its wake, the arched backs of the porpoises the forerunners of a gale, the admiral watching everything from poop to prow, the oars stopping altogether at the sound of the whistle, the swelling sails becoming slack when the mast snaps and falls.[41] Nowhere could we find so many of the most characteristic and strange sensations of the traveller touched with such truth. Everyone knows the lines which speak of the voyager's sinking of heart on the first evening at sea, and of the longings wakened in the traveller at the beginning of his journey by the distant evening bell[42]; the traveller's morning feelings are not less delicately noted--the strangeness on first waking in the open air with the sun high; morning thoughts, as day by day he wakes nearer home; the morning sight of the sea-beach quivering in the early light; the tarrying and lingering, before setting out in the morning[43]--
Noi eravam lunghesso 'l mare ancora, Come gente che pensa al suo cammino, Che va col cuore, e col corpo dimora.[44]
[Footnote 40: Inf. 31, 18.]
[Footnote 41: Ibid. 17, 16, 31; Purg. 24; Par. 2; Inf. 22; Purg. 30; Par. 25; Inf. 7.]
[Footnote 42: Purg. 8. "Era già l'ora," &c.]
[Footnote 43: Purg. 19, 27, 1, 2.]
[Footnote 44:
By ocean's shore we still prolonged our stay Like men, who, thinking of a journey near, Advance in thought, while yet their limbs delay.--WRIGHT.]
He has recorded equally the anxiety, the curiosity, the suspicion with which, in those times, stranger met and eyed stranger on the road; and a still more characteristic trait is to be found in those lines where he describes the pilgrim gazing around in the church of his vow, and thinking how he shall tell of it:
E quasi peregrin che si ricrea Nel tempio del suo voto riguardando, E spera già ridir com'ello stea:--Parad. 31.[45]
or again, in that description, so simple and touching, of his thoughts while waiting to see the relic for which he left his home:
Quale è colui che forse di Croazia Viene a veder la Veronica nostra, Che per l'antica fama non si sazia, Ma dice nel pensier, fin che si mostra; Signor mio Gesù Cristo, Dio verace, Or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?--Parad. 31.[46]
[Footnote 45:
And like a pilgrim who with fond delight Surveys the temple he has vow'd to see, And hopes one day its wonders to recite.--IBID.]
[Footnote 46:
Like one who, from Croatia come to see Our Veronica (image long adored), Gazes, as though content he ne'er could be-- Thus musing, while the relic is pourtray'd-- "Jesus my God, my Saviour and my Lord, O were thy features these I see display'd?"--WRIGHT.
Quella imagine benedetta la quale Gesù Cristo lasciò a noi per esempio della sua bellissima figura.--Vita Nuova, p. 353.
He speaks of the pilgrims going to Rome to see it; compare also the sonnet to the pilgrims, p. 355: