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Many of us remember Matthew Arnold's recommendation in the Essay on the Study of Poetry of the line from Dante's Paradiso, (III. 85)E la sua voluntate è nostra paceas a touchstone of poetic value. The independent beauty of this line may be questioned by comparison with some lines that follow near it. The words of Beatrice in the fifth canto, from the first verse through the twelfth, for example, seem to have a tonal sweetness, with a richness of ethical content that might somewhat more justly be cited to illustrate Matthew Arnold's point. Few isolated lines, however, really shine out by themselves from any poet. We read or recall them with the mood induced by their setting. Climaxes they may be, but their sovereign value depends on the sequence, as the ear and the mind are addressed together, perhaps.

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