Laudator Temporis Acti

Dante, Purgatorio 5.10-15 (tr. Jean and Robert Hollander):

'Is your mind so distracted,’ asked the master,
'that you have slowed your pace?
Why do you care what they are whispering?

Just follow me and let the people talk.
Be more like a sturdy tower
that does not tremble in the fiercest wind...'

"Perché l'animo tuo tanto s'impiglia,"
disse 'l maestro, "che l'andare allenti?
che ti fa ciò che quivi si pispiglia?

Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti:
sta come torre ferma, che non crolla
già mai la cima per soffiar di venti..."

The same, tr. Clive James:

"Why," said my Guide, "so tangled in the mind?
How can you be concerned by what they might
Be murmuring there? Stay with me close behind
And let them talk. Stand like a tower, staunch,
Unshaken at its top by gusts of wind..."

Charles S. Singleton ad loc.:

12. che ti fa ciò che quivi si pispiglia? The souls are now talking among themselves about the discovery of Dante's shadow. "Pispiglia," however, is already leading to "lascia dir le genti," in vs. 13, a moral injunction that would apply to Dante in this life and as such may be compared with the moral injunctions in Inf. XXIV, 46-51, and XXX, 145-48.

14-15. sta come torre ... venti: For the background of the metaphor, cf. Virgil, Aen. VII, 586, and X, 693-96—though there the figure is of a cliff rather than a tower.