t seeks his mother's breast
When fear and anguish vex his troubled heart."
(Purg. XXX.)

He recalls how he himself with child-like sorrow stood confessing his
sins:

"As little children, dumb with shame's keen smart,
Will listening stand with eyes upon the ground
Owning their faults with penitential heart
So then stood I."
(Purg. XXXI, 66)

When overcome by the splendor of the heaven Saturn it is as a child he
turns to Beatrice for assurance:

"Oppressed with stupor, I unto my guide
Turned like a little child who always runs
For refuge there where he confideth most,
And she, even as a mother who straightway
Gives comfort to her pale and breathless boy
With voice whose wont is to reassure him,
Said to me: 'Knowest thou not thou art in heaven?'"
(Par. XXII, I)

Again, it is the gentle heart of a fond father who speaks in the
following lines:

"Awaking late, no little innocent
So sudden plunges towards its mother's breast
With face intent upon its nourishment
As I did bend."
(Par. XXX, 85, Grandgent's trans.)

Another figure of beautiful imagery makes us appreciate Dante's
understanding of infantile emotion. He is eager to tell us how bright
souls flame upward towards the Virgin Mother and here is the simile:

"And as a babe which stretches either arm
To reach its mother, after it is fed
Showing a heart with sweet affection warm,
Thus every flaming brightness reared its head
And higher, higher straining, by its act
The love it bore to Mary plainly said."
(Par. XXIII, 121 Grandgent's trans.)

Perhaps the most appealing example of Dante's kindly love for children
springs from the fact that instead of following the teaching of St.
Thomas Aquinas, who holds that in heaven the risen bodies of baby
children will appear in the aspect of the prime of life, our poet
discloses them with the charm of babyhood carrolling, as it were, the
nursery songs of Heaven. Of those blessed infants he speaks:

"Their youth, those little faces plainly tell,
Their childish treble voices tell it, too,
If thou but use thine eyes and listen well."
(Par. XXXII, 46. Grandgent's trans.)

Seeing so many examples of Dante's love for motherhood and children, one
naturally wonders why he makes no mention of his own wife and children.
But we have only to remember that a nice sense of delicacy may have
restrained him from speaki