[Footnote: _Ravenna._]
Rossetti repeats the tradition that the composition of the
_Inferno_ so preyed upon Dante that the superstitious believed that
he had actually visited Hades and whispered to one another,
Behold him, how Hell's reek
Has crisped his beard and singed his cheek.
[Footnote: _Dante at Verona._]
A similar note is in Francis Thompson's description of Coventry Patmore:
And lo! that hair is blanched with travel-heats of hell.
[Footnote: _A Captain of Song._]
In this connection one thinks at once of Shelley's prematurely graying
hair, reflected in description of his heroes harried by their genius
into ill health, Prince Athanase is
A youth who as with toil and travel
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time.
[Footnote: _Prince Athanase_, a fragment.]
In _Alastor_, too, we see the hero wasting away until
His limbs were lean; his scattered hair,
Sered by the autumn of strange suffering,
Sung dirges in the wind: his listless hand
Hung like dead bone within his withered skin;
Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone
As in a furnace burning secretly
From his dark eyes alone.
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