In the midway of this our mortal life, / I found me in a gloomy wood, astray / Gone from the path direct:
These are the first lines of the Divine Comedy in Cary’s English version. The poem is set in the Easter week of the year 1300, when Dante was about 35, “midway” through the biblical span of seventy years.
Call to mind from whence we sprang: / Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes / But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.
Love, that denial takes from none belov’d, / Caught me with pleasing him so passing well, / That, as thou see’st, he yet deserts me not.
All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players;
Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –
Break, break, break, / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.