within myself my pride did speak,
To give plain voice to they who seek the truth within the stars.
I accuse you Dante Alighieri of conveying evil lies,
Of justifying muthos as a true philosophy.
In using superstitious fear to poison good men’s minds,
With circles within circles in a foul complexity.
A muthos is a tale believed which lacks the tool of reason,
To justify its basis in a rational argument,
It appeals to all religions bland and to the heart adds season,
Assigning faith good status whilst indulging ignorance.
Philosophy,
the champion of all verbal disputation,
Shall furnish keys to put an end to mental slavery,
The dialectic stepping stones supporting observation,
Through science and induction liberates methodically.
I accuse you Dante Alighieri of perpetuating lies,
Of supporting with a mythic Hell a Church theology.
In suggesting that the wrath of God extended from the skies,
To exact in Hell just vengeance passed without a court or trial.
And also that good justice lies in retributive pain.
But if God’s power doth not extend to all who enter there,
And Hell in truth be Satan’s realm which lacks the divine presence,
The power of God is limited and is not omnipresent,
And Satan then exacts the price for all men’s sinful vice.
But why would that which hath no cause to punish evil crimes,
Be so concerned to seek revenge for past injustices?:
If Satan doth embody that which causes sinful minds,
Shall Evil love not evil acts, but evil then despise?
But Satan too is punish-ed whilst froze in silence, chained,
Devouring undigested souls as reward for what he claimed:
Seek not to steal in Paradise, the glories of God’s fame,
Proud potency breeds infamy, and the just rewards of pain!
“Each sin committed on the Earth in Hell in due proportion,
Is accorded a just punishment befitting of the crime”,
Yet a life of sin some seventy years must be a grave distortion,
To earn eternal punishment dismissive of the time.
If Minos be the great Greek king ensuring proper censure,
Then why a pagan arbitor doth Dante thus select?
If a pagan spirit is assigned the justice and the measure,
Then Almighty God must guilty be of the perversity of neglect.
I accuse you Dante Alighieri in promoting with your faith,
The wicked fears that for two thousand years have festered in men hate,
And caused the humanistic creed to wither on the vine,
Like the message of the Nazarene: clear water turned to wine,
Converted by the needs of those with papal policies.
I accuse you Dante Alighieri in promoting superstitions,
That justified the atrocities of the Spanish Inquistion,
That laid the blind foundation false that silenced and confined,
The noble Galileo’s voice whose theories were decried.
The Spanish Inquisition did your mythic work condemn,
As blasphemous corrupt and false- polluting innocence,
But from that stance they did react with ruthless diligence,
Perpetuating torture from a base of ignorance.
Ignorance breeds ignorance; a continuity,
To justify inflicting in unending misery,
Unjust trials, although your mythic work did seek to shame,
The Holy Church and all that sought to profit from God’s name.
To ravish men with poetry which persuades them to believe,
That the transiency of pleasures and the politics of greed,
Were corrupting to men’s natures, life and good society,
This was your fair endeavour and your happy policy.
But to punish men you favour not in lurid fantasies,
Promoting brutish tortures for their infidelities,
Imbues the truth of torture with a false reality,
Suggesting pain can benefit pollutes the sanctity,
Of all that men hold sacred,
if they value dignity.
Canto III
The Spirit reveals her third form, a broken painter, and therein discusses the nature of artistic inspiration and the manner of this love.
I realised this dance of life,
with all its pains and pleasures past,
Was more than just a play produced to merry God’s amusement.
And with this thought I took some heart in thinking that the strife of Man was
more than just diversion in some strange theistic drama.
So too I knew the Spirits task had shaped these ghosts so I could grasp,
The weaknesses of those now passed to quicken my resolve.
And with these thoughts I sought to keep,
From off my mind the reign of sleep,
And to this end I offered up
my prayer of supplication:
O Spirit let my life pass not in idled hours unlettered,
Resolve in me the holy task so I might find the strength,
and courage to explain in verse this dance of life unfettered—
free from the curse of puerile words,
And through virtuous diligence,
Help communicate true meaning to the stubborn minds of men.
And not for wealth or glory great shall I recite this journey,
As in the labouring depths of night I wrestle with the facts,
Envisaging elusive words my heart and mind extended,
With hope to find your grace and love to guide me to the task,
So that I may communicate thy ways to men at last.
My guide revealed another form as I then pondered deeply on,
And there revealed a bearded man broke by the years of age . . .
But I did quizzically reflect,
How capricious nature doth reject,
all of its noble attributes and inward forms of beauty.
For if the soul a body makes,
Should not the body thus partake,
Of all the fair experience collected by the soul?
The Spirit’s sacred silence orchestrated no reply,
Yet in those depths accompanied no dread uncertainty,
But a growing faith within my heart which precluded what or why,
As if each step along the path would yield fresh certainty.
The man with Italian eyes then spoke,
And in his voice a chorus broke,
Of sad regrets which mixed within a crucible of sound:
When first the mother from her swollen womb and bosom deep,
Doth feel the first desires of this her infant borne to bare,
Her darkling child in grasping for the world is first to weep,
Whilst bearing toils invisible,
And breathing laboured air,
United with the pulsing pain in cyclic rhythmic gasps,
Her blood expelled, her sheets repelled,
her pain is slowly christened,
With vocal joy its naked shape doth yearn to be revealed,
Released upon chaotic shores,
The bonds of birth are burst.
And breached upon this spinning clod the infant child is flung,
So cruelly soon to stand alone in tottering solitude,
Upon the path of life and death, in joy and suffering,
To journey on enduring strife and wh
atever fate may bring,
For it like all the populace knows not its destiny.
And like the sapling branch
its roots belong in heaven’s soil,
But fed by disappointments and degrees of poverty,
It soon devolves through circumstance, and does not come to see,
Its life too soon is filled with pain and petty vanities,
Such is the yoke upon the soul that finds not liberty.
And yet its burdened hopes still sketch its plans expectantly,
Against the maddening voices loud the dreamer can be free.
I was that child
And when weaned from the teat I came to turn,
In youth to venture forth to speak my cherished heart’s affections,
My passions great,
my growing ardor sought and sorely yearned,
To capture her my truest heart with all of love’s attentions:
I found my muse Ophelia:-
with drowning flowers fair,
Conjuring cunning witchcraft and admiration with her stares,
And with her smile seductive she did swift enchantments linger,
Whilst drawing sweet sad music from her deft and agile fingers,
Awakening lost memories of distant voyages past,
From a golden guilded dulcimer,
Which her graceful hands did clasp.
From this his anguish issued forth as the painter did reflect,
Upon the noble consequence of his poor, dead wife’s neglect:
Oh piteous Beata Beatrix, the heaven’s fading child,
Who invoked the life shamanic with the absence of a smile,
Enduring holy abstinence could not your body save,
The empty hollows of your face made worm feed for the grave.
Beata mea domina!
(The argument)
The painter then berated with a voiced nobility,
The common folk who love for love and not posterity:
Of those who know not of the joy in the patronage of beauty,
But for love’s sake they bare the drudge of dull domestic duties,
Their hearts and minds are lacking, as they cannot empathise,
Or touch the gates of paradise with the beauty of her eyes.
Beata mea domina!
In children they may well pass on their own heredities,
To succeeding generations to escape mortality,
But life in mundane service kind to those that bear their name,
Knows nothing of the eternal bliss her chastening kiss ordains.
Beata mea domina!
Yet great the work of the artist is, that reveals from human forms,
The grace of perfect womanhood, her beauty twice adorned,
Blessed with three lilies in her hand,
then immortalised in heaven,
Her robe ungirt from clasp to hem,
and the stars in her hair were seven.
Beata mea domina!
(The rebuke by the Spirit)
At this my Lady then did speak in measured tones of song,
Of the merits of the artist’s love and its simple rights and wrongs:
The flowering vines her titian hair entwined around the temple,
Her worshipped face an altar raised to yield ambrosia,
Her honeyed lips with wine and praise did sheer delights contain,
The painter’s song, ten kisses long, her graceful love refrain.
Yet in your mirrored memories now framed by empty shrouds,
She was but one of many loves who in your life you met,
In reverence to the greater art above the lowly crowds
She sat alone above them all; inspiring to beget,
A queen in opal, or a saint, an angel with a sword,
Not as she is, but as she was when she was still adored.
In cultivating art in faithful service,
You pledged your troth and sold all that you framed,
But then soon sought out other forms to worship,
Yet found her face recaptured once again.
Oh what befell those lesser adorations?
You never came to voice them in your shame,
Although you forced and feigned facile creations,
You secretly did hold them in disdain.
Vide cor tuum
You oft denied love as you grew in stature,
And focused on respectability,
The cause of losing love through wreckless ardor,
You blamed upon your family’s vanities,
“Speak not whilst in the presence of my sister,
Speak not whilst seated in the model’s chair,
Speak not to show your lack of education,
Let silence court the blessed damozel fair.”
Ego dominus tuus
When she had lost her child and mystic beauty,
She through such pain still suffered for your art,
When she did need good love as true affection,
You yet refrained to break her gentle heart.
The moral:
A mother’s selfless service with the love that this contains,
Embodies what is sacred and shuns the vanity of fame.
To love cosmetic beauty is a transitory thing,
To be a friend of virtue is a song that angel’s sing,
To be a friend of virtue yields the joys that loving brings.
Both time and age help us to gauge,
the measure and the span,
Of the lover’s heart in mortal terms,
Behold the grief of man.
At this the painter’s head brought low in sorrow at his shame,
To mask the tears which from his eyes did seep;
A last refrain,
Arose from this sincerity as he lost love remembered,
Of the tender smiles which she did keep,
and the faults that he had favoured.
Oh bloom of youthful beauty swift replace-d,
By new ideals in ever fleeting times,
Who shall caress the lines etched on the faces,
And share the autumn fruit left on the vine?
One can not pause upon life’s passing journey,
To gather flowers to fill the empty space,
How sweet those flowers which once adored her beauty,
How swift the seasons’ passage is displaced.
But men are weak their legs are wax,
Their minds are made of flesh,
They hunt and scatter fertile seed,
And harvest their regrets.
Yes men are weak their legs are wax,
Their feet are made of clay,
Within the poet’s mansion house,
Lies death, dust and decay.
At this the elegy did fade,
A dream within a dream,
But as it slipped from consciousness his voice to me conveyed,
A closing psalm of parting,
To mark the dawning of the day:
Hold sacred that all living things in Nature,
Have equal worth and common qualities,
Treat all that lives as loving friends and neighbours,
And hold not men of wealth in higher degree.
Elevate no one above your class or station,
Take not your pleasures if and when you can,
To fuel the fire of cold abrupt aloofness,
Brings disillusion with the brotherhood of Man.
Canto IV
The Voyager is transported by his guide to another shore, and there discusses the problem of governing wisely and the politics of war with the Foolish King.
; The tapering beams of early morn did soft alight on Eden’s shore,
And signified that I should now (accompanied by my guide),
Not tarry on this holy site,
But pursue the depths of waning night,
We rose aloft in wing-ed flight
and fled the breaking dawn.
In flight I sought to look beyond the ancient places men had spurned,
With no regrets and cast my vision distant miles beyond.
To far horizons bolder yet,
Did we discern towards the West,
A citadel adjacent to the land of Albion . . .
The sea did roar, the waves did roll,
The spray did salt the tongue,
The phantom flags on distant ships upon the masts were hung,
No sleep did steal the seaman’s eyes or rock his cradled brain,
For the frozen wind had lashed the course and sleep had changed her name,
From sweet repose-d dreams of home to a bitter death refrain.
The driving rain, the tattered sail,
The moaning creaking deck,
The looming waves like mountains fell,
And caused one ship to wreck,
Upon some deadly hidden reef,
Whilst my Spirit did protect,
My fragile soul from all real harm and mortal frailties.
Across the raging tempest blasts we braved the ocean’s icy clasp,
Until like mariners lost we gasped,
Then breached upon the shore.
Breathless from the last endeavour I did kiss the earth,
Submitting to the pacing heart,
Whilst the Spirit did observe,
With placid curiosity, as I in gratitude,
Sought solace from the trembling night with sleep’s restorative.
Oh Night,
who doth entwine her sister Sleep with mournful shrouds,
The Dance Macabre Page 3