"Him the almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th' aetherial sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire."
Confounded for a time by his fall, he lies rolling in the fiery
gulf; but at length, rolling round his baleful eyes, he sees
"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed."
What manner of intuitions are embodied here? Perchance we
are beginning to treat them too lightly, as also the Hindu
doctrine of Karma; for the universe, after all, is the scene of the
reign of law. But however this may be, we are glad to emerge,
with Dante, from the regions of punitive flames into the regions
of the fires that purge--into the pure air that surrounds the Isle
of Purgatory.
"Sweet hue of eastern sapphire, that was spread
O'er the serene aspect of the pure air,
High up as the first circle, to mine eyes
Unwonted joy renewed, soon as I 'scaped
Forth from the atmosphere of deadly gloom
That had mine eyes and bosom filled with grief."
Shall we invest with like purgatorial powers the flaming swords
that barred the way to Paradise? Is such the inner meaning of
the appeal:
"do thou my tongue inspire
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire"?
The more hostile aspects of fire are most strikingly embodied in
the Teutonic giant Logi (Flame) with his children, who were
supposed to be the authors of every great conflagration, and
who might be seen in the midst of the flames, their heads
crowned with chaplets of fire.
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