The following lines were written about the time of the six hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dante, which was celebrated in various parts of the civilized world in May, 1865. If they have any interest for the reader, they will owe it in a good degree to the recent admirable translations of Dante’s great poem, which have familiarized the American public with the character of his mind and what he did for his own age and the ages which succeeded him, —the translation of the entire poem by Longfellow, in which the naked grandeur of the original is reproduced with a severe fidelity, and that of the “ Inferno” by Parsons, remarkable for the ease and spirit of its rendering.

The allusion in the last stanza of the lines here given will be readily understood to refer to the history of our own country for the year 1865.

WHO, midst the grasses of the field
That spring beneath our careless feet,
First found the shining stems that yield
The grains of life-sustaining wheat;
Who first upon the furrowed land
Strowed the bright grains to sprout and grow,
And ripen for the reaper’s hand, —
We know not, and we cannot know.
But well we know the hand that brought
And scattered, far as sight can reach,
The seeds of free and living thought
On the broad field of modern speech.
Midst the white hills that round us lie
We cherish that Great Sower’s fame ;
And, as we pile the sheaves on high,
With awe we utter Dante’s name.
Six centuries, since the poet’s birth,
Have come and flitted o’er our sphere ;
The richest harvest reaped on earth
Crowns the last century’s closing year.