Rodin in Rime

PAOLO ET FRANCESCA AOLO ignites, Francesca is consumed. Loosened she les, and breathes great gasps of love; He, like an hunter, hungers, leaps above, Attains, exults, despairs. This love is doomed, Were there no hell. In granite walls entombed Lies the true spirit and the soul thereof. The body is here—yet is it not enough, These litanies unchanted, unperfumed? Live in the shuddering marble they remain: Here is the infinite credo of pure pain. Here let life’s agony take hold enough Of all that lives: let partial tears for them Wake knowledge, brain-dissolving diadem Of white-hot woe upon the brows of love! D0