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of his grace, and more of his inflexible will.
This warning against mercenary marriages might be compared to Dante's answer to the embezzling Pope Nicholas III.
in Canto XIX.
of the Inferno:
He shall be happy in his love,There is a Spartan-like severity in this, but so was Dante very severe. It was his mission to purify the moral sense of his countrymen in an age when the Church no longer encouraged virtue; and Emerson no less vigorously opposed the rank materialism of America in a period of exceptional prosperity. The next succeeding lines are not exactly Dantean, but they are among Emerson's finest, and worthy of any great poet. The “Pine tree” says:
Like to like shall joyful prove;
He shall be happy whilst he woos,
Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse.
But if with gold she bind her hair,
And deck her breast with diamond,
Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear,
Though thou lie alone on the ground.
The robe of silk in which she shines,
It was woven of many sins;
And the shreds
Which she sheds
In the wearing of the same,
Shall be grief on grief,
And shame on shame.
