Midway in our life's journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood. How shall I say
what wood that was! I never saw so drear,
so rank, so arduous a wilderness!
It's very memory gives a shape to fear.
Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!
But since it came to good, I will recount
all that I found revealed there by God's grace.
How I cam to it I cannot rightly say,
so drugged and loose with sleep had I become
when I first wandered there from the True Way.
BUt at the far end of that valley of eivl
whose maze had sapped my very heart with fear,
I found myself in front of a little hill
and lifted up my eyes. ITs shoulders glowed already with the sweet rays fo that planet
whose virtue leads mean straight on every road,
and the shining strengthened me against the fright
whose agony had wracked the lake of my heart
through all the terrors of that piteous night.
I'm trying to get a room full of students to understand Dante again today. My struggle continues in thier dense dark woods.
Doing so, I am impressed again at how far back the metaphor of the road goes in literature. Much like Meyer, Korauc, Twain, and other writers since, Dante uses the road as the path of life and the path toward another stage of life.
Me? I'm just riding on. If I can stay on the road and not steer into the arduous wilderness I'll be happy to keep on going. Perhaps Dante with his lost path was taking more time to consider what was going on that I am, but instead I'll just stay with my forward motion. I know not where I am going, but I'm riding ahead trying to figure it out.
Keep riding.
