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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1003 ***</div>
<h1>The Divine Comedy</h1>
<h2 class="no-break">of Dante Alighieri</h2>
<h3>Translated by<br />HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW<br /><br />PARADISO</h3>
<hr />
<h2>Contents</h2>
<table summary="" style="">
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.I">I. The Ascent to the First Heaven. The Sphere of Fire.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.II">II. The First Heaven, the Moon: Spirits who, having taken Sacred Vows, were forced to violate them. The Lunar Spots.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.III">III. Piccarda Donati and the Empress Constance.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.IV">IV. Questionings of the Soul and of Broken Vows.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.V">V. Discourse of Beatrice on Vows and Compensations. Ascent to the Second Heaven, Mercury: Spirits who for the Love of Fame achieved great Deeds.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.VI">VI. Justinian. The Roman Eagle. The Empire. Romeo.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.VII">VII. Beatrice’s Discourse of the Crucifixion, the Incarnation, the Immortality of the Soul, and the Resurrection of the Body.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.VIII">VIII. Ascent to the Third Heaven, Venus: Lovers. Charles Martel. Discourse on diverse Natures.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.IX">IX. Cunizza da Romano, Folco of Marseilles, and Rahab. Neglect of the Holy Land.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.X">X. The Fourth Heaven, the Sun: Theologians and Fathers of the Church. The First Circle. St. Thomas of Aquinas.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XI">XI. St. Thomas recounts the Life of St. Francis. Lament over the State of the Dominican Order.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XII">XII. St. Buonaventura recounts the Life of St. Dominic. Lament over the State of the Franciscan Order. The Second Circle.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XIII">XIII. Of the Wisdom of Solomon. St. Thomas reproaches Dante’s Judgement.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XIV">XIV. The Third Circle. Discourse on the Resurrection of the Flesh. The Fifth Heaven, Mars: Martyrs and Crusaders who died fighting for the true Faith. The Celestial Cross.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XV">XV. Cacciaguida. Florence in the Olden Time.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XVI">XVI. Dante’s Noble Ancestry. Cacciaguida’s Discourse of the Great Florentines.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XVII">XVII. Cacciaguida’s Prophecy of Dante’s Banishment.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XVIII">XVIII. The Sixth Heaven, Jupiter: Righteous Kings and Rulers. The Celestial Eagle. Dante’s Invectives against ecclesiastical Avarice.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XIX">XIX. The Eagle discourses of Salvation, Faith, and Virtue. Condemnation of the vile Kings of A.D. 1300.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XX">XX. The Eagle praises the Righteous Kings of old. Benevolence of the Divine Will.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXI">XXI. The Seventh Heaven, Saturn: The Contemplative. The Celestial Stairway. St. Peter Damiano. His Invectives against the Luxury of the Prelates.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXII">XXII. St. Benedict. His Lamentation over the Corruption of Monks. The Eighth Heaven, the Fixed Stars.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXIII">XXIII. The Triumph of Christ. The Virgin Mary. The Apostles. Gabriel.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXIV">XXIV. The Radiant Wheel. St. Peter examines Dante on Faith.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXV">XXV. The Laurel Crown. St. James examines Dante on Hope. Dante’s Blindness.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXVI">XXVI. St. John examines Dante on Charity. Dante’s Sight. Adam.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXVII">XXVII. St. Peter’s reproof of bad Popes. The Ascent to the Ninth Heaven, the ‘Primum Mobile.’</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXVIII">XXVIII. God and the Angelic Hierarchies.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXIX">XXIX. Beatrice’s Discourse of the Creation of the Angels, and of the Fall of Lucifer. Her Reproof of Foolish and Avaricious Preachers.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXX">XXX. The Tenth Heaven, or Empyrean. The River of Light. The Two Courts of Heaven. The White Rose of Paradise. The great Throne.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXXI">XXXI. The Glory of Paradise. Departure of Beatrice. St. Bernard.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXXII">XXXII. St. Bernard points out the Saints in the White Rose.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#CantoIII.XXXIII">XXXIII. Prayer to the Virgin. The Threefold Circle of the Trinity. Mystery of the Divine and Human Nature.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#appendix">APPENDIX</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.I"></a>Paradiso: Canto I</h2>
<p class="noindent">
The glory of Him who moveth everything<br />
Doth penetrate the universe, and shine<br />
In one part more and in another less.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within that heaven which most his light receives<br />
Was I, and things beheld which to repeat<br />
Nor knows, nor can, who from above descends;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because in drawing near to its desire<br />
Our intellect ingulphs itself so far,<br />
That after it the memory cannot go.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Truly whatever of the holy realm<br />
I had the power to treasure in my mind<br />
Shall now become the subject of my song.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O good Apollo, for this last emprise<br />
Make of me such a vessel of thy power<br />
As giving the beloved laurel asks!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One summit of Parnassus hitherto<br />
Has been enough for me, but now with both<br />
I needs must enter the arena left.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Enter into my bosom, thou, and breathe<br />
As at the time when Marsyas thou didst draw<br />
Out of the scabbard of those limbs of his.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O power divine, lend’st thou thyself to me<br />
So that the shadow of the blessed realm<br />
Stamped in my brain I can make manifest,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou’lt see me come unto thy darling tree,<br />
And crown myself thereafter with those leaves<br />
Of which the theme and thou shall make me worthy.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So seldom, Father, do we gather them<br />
For triumph or of Caesar or of Poet,<br />
(The fault and shame of human inclinations,)
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That the Peneian foliage should bring forth<br />
Joy to the joyous Delphic deity,<br />
When any one it makes to thirst for it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
A little spark is followed by great flame;<br />
Perchance with better voices after me<br />
Shall prayer be made that Cyrrha may respond!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To mortal men by passages diverse<br />
Uprises the world’s lamp; but by that one<br />
Which circles four uniteth with three crosses,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With better course and with a better star<br />
Conjoined it issues, and the mundane wax<br />
Tempers and stamps more after its own fashion.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Almost that passage had made morning there<br />
And evening here, and there was wholly white<br />
That hemisphere, and black the other part,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When Beatrice towards the left-hand side<br />
I saw turned round, and gazing at the sun;<br />
Never did eagle fasten so upon it!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And even as a second ray is wont<br />
To issue from the first and reascend,<br />
Like to a pilgrim who would fain return,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus of her action, through the eyes infused<br />
In my imagination, mine I made,<br />
And sunward fixed mine eyes beyond our wont.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There much is lawful which is here unlawful<br />
Unto our powers, by virtue of the place<br />
Made for the human species as its own.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not long I bore it, nor so little while<br />
But I beheld it sparkle round about<br />
Like iron that comes molten from the fire;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And suddenly it seemed that day to day<br />
Was added, as if He who has the power<br />
Had with another sun the heaven adorned.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With eyes upon the everlasting wheels<br />
Stood Beatrice all intent, and I, on her<br />
Fixing my vision from above removed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such at her aspect inwardly became<br />
As Glaucus, tasting of the herb that made him<br />
Peer of the other gods beneath the sea.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To represent transhumanise in words<br />
Impossible were; the example, then, suffice<br />
Him for whom Grace the experience reserves.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If I was merely what of me thou newly<br />
Createdst, Love who governest the heaven,<br />
Thou knowest, who didst lift me with thy light!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When now the wheel, which thou dost make eternal<br />
Desiring thee, made me attentive to it<br />
By harmony thou dost modulate and measure,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then seemed to me so much of heaven enkindled<br />
By the sun’s flame, that neither rain nor river<br />
E’er made a lake so widely spread abroad.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The newness of the sound and the great light<br />
Kindled in me a longing for their cause,<br />
Never before with such acuteness felt;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence she, who saw me as I saw myself,<br />
To quiet in me my perturbed mind,<br />
Opened her mouth, ere I did mine to ask,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And she began: “Thou makest thyself so dull<br />
With false imagining, that thou seest not<br />
What thou wouldst see if thou hadst shaken it off.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou art not upon earth, as thou believest;<br />
But lightning, fleeing its appropriate site,<br />
Ne’er ran as thou, who thitherward returnest.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If of my former doubt I was divested<br />
By these brief little words more smiled than spoken,<br />
I in a new one was the more ensnared;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And said: “Already did I rest content<br />
From great amazement; but am now amazed<br />
In what way I transcend these bodies light.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh,<br />
Her eyes directed tow’rds me with that look<br />
A mother casts on a delirious child;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And she began: “All things whate’er they be<br />
Have order among themselves, and this is form,<br />
That makes the universe resemble God.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here do the higher creatures see the footprints<br />
Of the Eternal Power, which is the end<br />
Whereto is made the law already mentioned.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In the order that I speak of are inclined<br />
All natures, by their destinies diverse,<br />
More or less near unto their origin;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hence they move onward unto ports diverse<br />
O’er the great sea of being; and each one<br />
With instinct given it which bears it on.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This bears away the fire towards the moon;<br />
This is in mortal hearts the motive power<br />
This binds together and unites the earth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor only the created things that are<br />
Without intelligence this bow shoots forth,<br />
But those that have both intellect and love.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The Providence that regulates all this<br />
Makes with its light the heaven forever quiet,<br />
Wherein that turns which has the greatest haste.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And thither now, as to a site decreed,<br />
Bears us away the virtue of that cord<br />
Which aims its arrows at a joyous mark.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
True is it, that as oftentimes the form<br />
Accords not with the intention of the art,<br />
Because in answering is matter deaf,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So likewise from this course doth deviate<br />
Sometimes the creature, who the power possesses,<br />
Though thus impelled, to swerve some other way,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
(In the same wise as one may see the fire<br />
Fall from a cloud,) if the first impetus<br />
Earthward is wrested by some false delight.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou shouldst not wonder more, if well I judge,<br />
At thine ascent, than at a rivulet<br />
From some high mount descending to the lowland.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Marvel it would be in thee, if deprived<br />
Of hindrance, thou wert seated down below,<br />
As if on earth the living fire were quiet.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereat she heavenward turned again her face.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.II"></a>Paradiso: Canto II</h2>
<p class="noindent">
O Ye, who in some pretty little boat,<br />
Eager to listen, have been following<br />
Behind my ship, that singing sails along,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Turn back to look again upon your shores;<br />
Do not put out to sea, lest peradventure,<br />
In losing me, you might yourselves be lost.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The sea I sail has never yet been passed;<br />
Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,<br />
And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ye other few who have the neck uplifted<br />
Betimes to th’ bread of Angels upon which<br />
One liveth here and grows not sated by it,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Well may you launch upon the deep salt-sea<br />
Your vessel, keeping still my wake before you<br />
Upon the water that grows smooth again.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Those glorious ones who unto Colchos passed<br />
Were not so wonder-struck as you shall be,<br />
When Jason they beheld a ploughman made!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The con-created and perpetual thirst<br />
For the realm deiform did bear us on,<br />
As swift almost as ye the heavens behold.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Upward gazed Beatrice, and I at her;<br />
And in such space perchance as strikes a bolt<br />
And flies, and from the notch unlocks itself,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Arrived I saw me where a wondrous thing<br />
Drew to itself my sight; and therefore she<br />
From whom no care of mine could be concealed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Towards me turning, blithe as beautiful,<br />
Said unto me: “Fix gratefully thy mind<br />
On God, who unto the first star has brought us.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It seemed to me a cloud encompassed us,<br />
Luminous, dense, consolidate and bright<br />
As adamant on which the sun is striking.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Into itself did the eternal pearl<br />
Receive us, even as water doth receive<br />
A ray of light, remaining still unbroken.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If I was body, (and we here conceive not<br />
How one dimension tolerates another,<br />
Which needs must be if body enter body,)
</p>
<p class="noindent">
More the desire should be enkindled in us<br />
That essence to behold, wherein is seen<br />
How God and our own nature were united.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There will be seen what we receive by faith,<br />
Not demonstrated, but self-evident<br />
In guise of the first truth that man believes.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I made reply: “Madonna, as devoutly<br />
As most I can do I give thanks to Him<br />
Who has removed me from the mortal world.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But tell me what the dusky spots may be<br />
Upon this body, which below on earth<br />
Make people tell that fabulous tale of Cain?”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Somewhat she smiled; and then, “If the opinion<br />
Of mortals be erroneous,” she said,<br />
“Where’er the key of sense doth not unlock,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Certes, the shafts of wonder should not pierce thee<br />
Now, forasmuch as, following the senses,<br />
Thou seest that the reason has short wings.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But tell me what thou think’st of it thyself.”<br />
And I: “What seems to us up here diverse,<br />
Is caused, I think, by bodies rare and dense.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And she: “Right truly shalt thou see immersed<br />
In error thy belief, if well thou hearest<br />
The argument that I shall make against it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Lights many the eighth sphere displays to you<br />
Which in their quality and quantity<br />
May noted be of aspects different.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If this were caused by rare and dense alone,<br />
One only virtue would there be in all<br />
Or more or less diffused, or equally.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Virtues diverse must be perforce the fruits<br />
Of formal principles; and these, save one,<br />
Of course would by thy reasoning be destroyed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Besides, if rarity were of this dimness<br />
The cause thou askest, either through and through<br />
This planet thus attenuate were of matter,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Or else, as in a body is apportioned<br />
The fat and lean, so in like manner this<br />
Would in its volume interchange the leaves.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Were it the former, in the sun’s eclipse<br />
It would be manifest by the shining through<br />
Of light, as through aught tenuous interfused.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This is not so; hence we must scan the other,<br />
And if it chance the other I demolish,<br />
Then falsified will thy opinion be.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But if this rarity go not through and through,<br />
There needs must be a limit, beyond which<br />
Its contrary prevents the further passing,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And thence the foreign radiance is reflected,<br />
Even as a colour cometh back from glass,<br />
The which behind itself concealeth lead.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now thou wilt say the sunbeam shows itself<br />
More dimly there than in the other parts,<br />
By being there reflected farther back.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From this reply experiment will free thee<br />
If e’er thou try it, which is wont to be<br />
The fountain to the rivers of your arts.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Three mirrors shalt thou take, and two remove<br />
Alike from thee, the other more remote<br />
Between the former two shall meet thine eyes.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Turned towards these, cause that behind thy back<br />
Be placed a light, illuming the three mirrors<br />
And coming back to thee by all reflected.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Though in its quantity be not so ample<br />
The image most remote, there shalt thou see<br />
How it perforce is equally resplendent.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now, as beneath the touches of warm rays<br />
Naked the subject of the snow remains<br />
Both of its former colour and its cold,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thee thus remaining in thy intellect,<br />
Will I inform with such a living light,<br />
That it shall tremble in its aspect to thee.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within the heaven of the divine repose<br />
Revolves a body, in whose virtue lies<br />
The being of whatever it contains.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The following heaven, that has so many eyes,<br />
Divides this being by essences diverse,<br />
Distinguished from it, and by it contained.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The other spheres, by various differences,<br />
All the distinctions which they have within them<br />
Dispose unto their ends and their effects.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus do these organs of the world proceed,<br />
As thou perceivest now, from grade to grade;<br />
Since from above they take, and act beneath.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Observe me well, how through this place I come<br />
Unto the truth thou wishest, that hereafter<br />
Thou mayst alone know how to keep the ford
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The power and motion of the holy spheres,<br />
As from the artisan the hammer’s craft,<br />
Forth from the blessed motors must proceed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The heaven, which lights so manifold make fair,<br />
From the Intelligence profound, which turns it,<br />
The image takes, and makes of it a seal.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And even as the soul within your dust<br />
Through members different and accommodated<br />
To faculties diverse expands itself,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So likewise this Intelligence diffuses<br />
Its virtue multiplied among the stars.<br />
Itself revolving on its unity.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Virtue diverse doth a diverse alloyage<br />
Make with the precious body that it quickens,<br />
In which, as life in you, it is combined.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From the glad nature whence it is derived,<br />
The mingled virtue through the body shines,<br />
Even as gladness through the living pupil.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From this proceeds whate’er from light to light<br />
Appeareth different, not from dense and rare:<br />
This is the formal principle that produces,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
According to its goodness, dark and bright.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.III"></a>Paradiso: Canto III</h2>
<p class="noindent">
That Sun, which erst with love my bosom warmed,<br />
Of beauteous truth had unto me discovered,<br />
By proving and reproving, the sweet aspect.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And, that I might confess myself convinced<br />
And confident, so far as was befitting,<br />
I lifted more erect my head to speak.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But there appeared a vision, which withdrew me<br />
So close to it, in order to be seen,<br />
That my confession I remembered not.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such as through polished and transparent glass,<br />
Or waters crystalline and undisturbed,<br />
But not so deep as that their bed be lost,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Come back again the outlines of our faces<br />
So feeble, that a pearl on forehead white<br />
Comes not less speedily unto our eyes;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such saw I many faces prompt to speak,<br />
So that I ran in error opposite<br />
To that which kindled love ’twixt man and fountain.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As soon as I became aware of them,<br />
Esteeming them as mirrored semblances,<br />
To see of whom they were, mine eyes I turned,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And nothing saw, and once more turned them forward<br />
Direct into the light of my sweet Guide,<br />
Who smiling kindled in her holy eyes.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Marvel thou not,” she said to me, “because<br />
I smile at this thy puerile conceit,<br />
Since on the truth it trusts not yet its foot,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But turns thee, as ’tis wont, on emptiness.<br />
True substances are these which thou beholdest,<br />
Here relegate for breaking of some vow.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore speak with them, listen and believe;<br />
For the true light, which giveth peace to them,<br />
Permits them not to turn from it their feet.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I unto the shade that seemed most wishful<br />
To speak directed me, and I began,<br />
As one whom too great eagerness bewilders:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O well-created spirit, who in the rays<br />
Of life eternal dost the sweetness taste<br />
Which being untasted ne’er is comprehended,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Grateful ’twill be to me, if thou content me<br />
Both with thy name and with your destiny.”<br />
Whereat she promptly and with laughing eyes:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Our charity doth never shut the doors<br />
Against a just desire, except as one<br />
Who wills that all her court be like herself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I was a virgin sister in the world;<br />
And if thy mind doth contemplate me well,<br />
The being more fair will not conceal me from thee,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But thou shalt recognise I am Piccarda,<br />
Who, stationed here among these other blessed,<br />
Myself am blessed in the slowest sphere.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
All our affections, that alone inflamed<br />
Are in the pleasure of the Holy Ghost,<br />
Rejoice at being of his order formed;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And this allotment, which appears so low,<br />
Therefore is given us, because our vows<br />
Have been neglected and in some part void.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence I to her: “In your miraculous aspects<br />
There shines I know not what of the divine,<br />
Which doth transform you from our first conceptions.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore I was not swift in my remembrance;<br />
But what thou tellest me now aids me so,<br />
That the refiguring is easier to me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But tell me, ye who in this place are happy,<br />
Are you desirous of a higher place,<br />
To see more or to make yourselves more friends?”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
First with those other shades she smiled a little;<br />
Thereafter answered me so full of gladness,<br />
She seemed to burn in the first fire of love:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Brother, our will is quieted by virtue<br />
Of charity, that makes us wish alone<br />
For what we have, nor gives us thirst for more.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If to be more exalted we aspired,<br />
Discordant would our aspirations be<br />
Unto the will of Him who here secludes us;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Which thou shalt see finds no place in these circles,<br />
If being in charity is needful here,<br />
And if thou lookest well into its nature;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nay, ’tis essential to this blest existence<br />
To keep itself within the will divine,<br />
Whereby our very wishes are made one;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that, as we are station above station<br />
Throughout this realm, to all the realm ’tis pleasing,<br />
As to the King, who makes his will our will.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And his will is our peace; this is the sea<br />
To which is moving onward whatsoever<br />
It doth create, and all that nature makes.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then it was clear to me how everywhere<br />
In heaven is Paradise, although the grace<br />
Of good supreme there rain not in one measure.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But as it comes to pass, if one food sates,<br />
And for another still remains the longing,<br />
We ask for this, and that decline with thanks,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
E’en thus did I; with gesture and with word,<br />
To learn from her what was the web wherein<br />
She did not ply the shuttle to the end.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“A perfect life and merit high in-heaven<br />
A lady o’er us,” said she, “by whose rule<br />
Down in your world they vest and veil themselves,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That until death they may both watch and sleep<br />
Beside that Spouse who every vow accepts<br />
Which charity conformeth to his pleasure.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To follow her, in girlhood from the world<br />
I fled, and in her habit shut myself,<br />
And pledged me to the pathway of her sect.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then men accustomed unto evil more<br />
Than unto good, from the sweet cloister tore me;<br />
God knows what afterward my life became.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This other splendour, which to thee reveals<br />
Itself on my right side, and is enkindled<br />
With all the illumination of our sphere,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
What of myself I say applies to her;<br />
A nun was she, and likewise from her head<br />
Was ta’en the shadow of the sacred wimple.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But when she too was to the world returned<br />
Against her wishes and against good usage,<br />
Of the heart’s veil she never was divested.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of great Costanza this is the effulgence,<br />
Who from the second wind of Suabia<br />
Brought forth the third and latest puissance.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus unto me she spake, and then began<br />
“Ave Maria” singing, and in singing<br />
Vanished, as through deep water something heavy.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My sight, that followed her as long a time<br />
As it was possible, when it had lost her<br />
Turned round unto the mark of more desire,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And wholly unto Beatrice reverted;<br />
But she such lightnings flashed into mine eyes,<br />
That at the first my sight endured it not;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And this in questioning more backward made me.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.IV"></a>Paradiso: Canto IV</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Between two viands, equally removed<br />
And tempting, a free man would die of hunger<br />
Ere either he could bring unto his teeth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So would a lamb between the ravenings<br />
Of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike;<br />
And so would stand a dog between two does.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not,<br />
Impelled in equal measure by my doubts,<br />
Since it must be so, nor do I commend.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I held my peace; but my desire was painted<br />
Upon my face, and questioning with that<br />
More fervent far than by articulate speech.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Beatrice did as Daniel had done<br />
Relieving Nebuchadnezzar from the wrath<br />
Which rendered him unjustly merciless,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And said: “Well see I how attracteth thee<br />
One and the other wish, so that thy care<br />
Binds itself so that forth it does not breathe.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou arguest, if good will be permanent,<br />
The violence of others, for what reason<br />
Doth it decrease the measure of my merit?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Again for doubting furnish thee occasion<br />
Souls seeming to return unto the stars,<br />
According to the sentiment of Plato.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
These are the questions which upon thy wish<br />
Are thrusting equally; and therefore first<br />
Will I treat that which hath the most of gall.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He of the Seraphim most absorbed in God,<br />
Moses, and Samuel, and whichever John<br />
Thou mayst select, I say, and even Mary,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Have not in any other heaven their seats,<br />
Than have those spirits that just appeared to thee,<br />
Nor of existence more or fewer years;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But all make beautiful the primal circle,<br />
And have sweet life in different degrees,<br />
By feeling more or less the eternal breath.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
They showed themselves here, not because allotted<br />
This sphere has been to them, but to give sign<br />
Of the celestial which is least exalted.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To speak thus is adapted to your mind,<br />
Since only through the sense it apprehendeth<br />
What then it worthy makes of intellect.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On this account the Scripture condescends<br />
Unto your faculties, and feet and hands<br />
To God attributes, and means something else;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And Holy Church under an aspect human<br />
Gabriel and Michael represent to you,<br />
And him who made Tobias whole again.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That which Timaeus argues of the soul<br />
Doth not resemble that which here is seen,<br />
Because it seems that as he speaks he thinks.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He says the soul unto its star returns,<br />
Believing it to have been severed thence<br />
Whenever nature gave it as a form.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Perhaps his doctrine is of other guise<br />
Than the words sound, and possibly may be<br />
With meaning that is not to be derided.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If he doth mean that to these wheels return<br />
The honour of their influence and the blame,<br />
Perhaps his bow doth hit upon some truth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This principle ill understood once warped<br />
The whole world nearly, till it went astray<br />
Invoking Jove and Mercury and Mars.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The other doubt which doth disquiet thee<br />
Less venom has, for its malevolence<br />
Could never lead thee otherwhere from me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That as unjust our justice should appear<br />
In eyes of mortals, is an argument<br />
Of faith, and not of sin heretical.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But still, that your perception may be able<br />
To thoroughly penetrate this verity,<br />
As thou desirest, I will satisfy thee.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If it be violence when he who suffers<br />
Co-operates not with him who uses force,<br />
These souls were not on that account excused;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For will is never quenched unless it will,<br />
But operates as nature doth in fire<br />
If violence a thousand times distort it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hence, if it yieldeth more or less, it seconds<br />
The force; and these have done so, having power<br />
Of turning back unto the holy place.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If their will had been perfect, like to that<br />
Which Lawrence fast upon his gridiron held,<br />
And Mutius made severe to his own hand,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It would have urged them back along the road<br />
Whence they were dragged, as soon as they were free;<br />
But such a solid will is all too rare.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And by these words, if thou hast gathered them<br />
As thou shouldst do, the argument is refuted<br />
That would have still annoyed thee many times.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But now another passage runs across<br />
Before thine eyes, and such that by thyself<br />
Thou couldst not thread it ere thou wouldst be weary.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I have for certain put into thy mind<br />
That soul beatified could never lie,<br />
For it is near the primal Truth,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And then thou from Piccarda might’st have heard<br />
Costanza kept affection for the veil,<br />
So that she seemeth here to contradict me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Many times, brother, has it come to pass,<br />
That, to escape from peril, with reluctance<br />
That has been done it was not right to do,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
E’en as Alcmaeon (who, being by his father<br />
Thereto entreated, his own mother slew)<br />
Not to lose pity pitiless became.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
At this point I desire thee to remember<br />
That force with will commingles, and they cause<br />
That the offences cannot be excused.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Will absolute consenteth not to evil;<br />
But in so far consenteth as it fears,<br />
If it refrain, to fall into more harm.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hence when Piccarda uses this expression,<br />
She meaneth the will absolute, and I<br />
The other, so that both of us speak truth.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such was the flowing of the holy river<br />
That issued from the fount whence springs all truth;<br />
This put to rest my wishes one and all.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O love of the first lover, O divine,”<br />
Said I forthwith, “whose speech inundates me<br />
And warms me so, it more and more revives me,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My own affection is not so profound<br />
As to suffice in rendering grace for grace;<br />
Let Him, who sees and can, thereto respond.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Well I perceive that never sated is<br />
Our intellect unless the Truth illume it,<br />
Beyond which nothing true expands itself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It rests therein, as wild beast in his lair,<br />
When it attains it; and it can attain it;<br />
If not, then each desire would frustrate be.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore springs up, in fashion of a shoot,<br />
Doubt at the foot of truth; and this is nature,<br />
Which to the top from height to height impels us.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This doth invite me, this assurance give me<br />
With reverence, Lady, to inquire of you<br />
Another truth, which is obscure to me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I wish to know if man can satisfy you<br />
For broken vows with other good deeds, so<br />
That in your balance they will not be light.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Beatrice gazed upon me with her eyes<br />
Full of the sparks of love, and so divine,<br />
That, overcome my power, I turned my back
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And almost lost myself with eyes downcast.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.V"></a>Paradiso: Canto V</h2>
<p class="noindent">
“If in the heat of love I flame upon thee<br />
Beyond the measure that on earth is seen,<br />
So that the valour of thine eyes I vanquish,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Marvel thou not thereat; for this proceeds<br />
From perfect sight, which as it apprehends<br />
To the good apprehended moves its feet.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Well I perceive how is already shining<br />
Into thine intellect the eternal light,<br />
That only seen enkindles always love;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if some other thing your love seduce,<br />
’Tis nothing but a vestige of the same,<br />
Ill understood, which there is shining through.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou fain wouldst know if with another service<br />
For broken vow can such return be made<br />
As to secure the soul from further claim.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This Canto thus did Beatrice begin;<br />
And, as a man who breaks not off his speech,<br />
Continued thus her holy argument:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“The greatest gift that in his largess God<br />
Creating made, and unto his own goodness<br />
Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Most highly, is the freedom of the will,<br />
Wherewith the creatures of intelligence<br />
Both all and only were and are endowed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now wilt thou see, if thence thou reasonest,<br />
The high worth of a vow, if it he made<br />
So that when thou consentest God consents:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For, closing between God and man the compact,<br />
A sacrifice is of this treasure made,<br />
Such as I say, and made by its own act.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
What can be rendered then as compensation?<br />
Think’st thou to make good use of what thou’st offered,<br />
With gains ill gotten thou wouldst do good deed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now art thou certain of the greater point;<br />
But because Holy Church in this dispenses,<br />
Which seems against the truth which I have shown thee,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Behoves thee still to sit awhile at table,<br />
Because the solid food which thou hast taken<br />
Requireth further aid for thy digestion.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Open thy mind to that which I reveal,<br />
And fix it there within; for ’tis not knowledge,<br />
The having heard without retaining it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In the essence of this sacrifice two things<br />
Convene together; and the one is that<br />
Of which ’tis made, the other is the agreement.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This last for evermore is cancelled not<br />
Unless complied with, and concerning this<br />
With such precision has above been spoken.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore it was enjoined upon the Hebrews<br />
To offer still, though sometimes what was offered<br />
Might be commuted, as thou ought’st to know.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The other, which is known to thee as matter,<br />
May well indeed be such that one errs not<br />
If it for other matter be exchanged.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But let none shift the burden on his shoulder<br />
At his arbitrament, without the turning<br />
Both of the white and of the yellow key;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And every permutation deem as foolish,<br />
If in the substitute the thing relinquished,<br />
As the four is in six, be not contained.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore whatever thing has so great weight<br />
In value that it drags down every balance,<br />
Cannot be satisfied with other spending.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Let mortals never take a vow in jest;<br />
Be faithful and not blind in doing that,<br />
As Jephthah was in his first offering,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whom more beseemed to say, ‘I have done wrong,<br />
Than to do worse by keeping; and as foolish<br />
Thou the great leader of the Greeks wilt find,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence wept Iphigenia her fair face,<br />
And made for her both wise and simple weep,<br />
Who heard such kind of worship spoken of.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Christians, be ye more serious in your movements;<br />
Be ye not like a feather at each wind,<br />
And think not every water washes you.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ye have the Old and the New Testament,<br />
And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you<br />
Let this suffice you unto your salvation.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If evil appetite cry aught else to you,<br />
Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep,<br />
So that the Jew among you may not mock you.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Be ye not as the lamb that doth abandon<br />
Its mother’s milk, and frolicsome and simple<br />
Combats at its own pleasure with itself.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus Beatrice to me even as I write it;<br />
Then all desireful turned herself again<br />
To that part where the world is most alive.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Her silence and her change of countenance<br />
Silence imposed upon my eager mind,<br />
That had already in advance new questions;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as an arrow that upon the mark<br />
Strikes ere the bowstring quiet hath become,<br />
So did we speed into the second realm.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My Lady there so joyful I beheld,<br />
As into the brightness of that heaven she entered,<br />
More luminous thereat the planet grew;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if the star itself was changed and smiled,<br />
What became I, who by my nature am<br />
Exceeding mutable in every guise!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As, in a fish-pond which is pure and tranquil,<br />
The fishes draw to that which from without<br />
Comes in such fashion that their food they deem it;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So I beheld more than a thousand splendours<br />
Drawing towards us, and in each was heard:<br />
“Lo, this is she who shall increase our love.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as each one was coming unto us,<br />
Full of beatitude the shade was seen,<br />
By the effulgence clear that issued from it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Think, Reader, if what here is just beginning<br />
No farther should proceed, how thou wouldst have<br />
An agonizing need of knowing more;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And of thyself thou’lt see how I from these<br />
Was in desire of hearing their conditions,<br />
As they unto mine eyes were manifest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O thou well-born, unto whom Grace concedes<br />
To see the thrones of the eternal triumph,<br />
Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With light that through the whole of heaven is spread<br />
Kindled are we, and hence if thou desirest<br />
To know of us, at thine own pleasure sate thee.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus by some one among those holy spirits<br />
Was spoken, and by Beatrice: “Speak, speak<br />
Securely, and believe them even as Gods.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Well I perceive how thou dost nest thyself<br />
In thine own light, and drawest it from thine eyes,<br />
Because they coruscate when thou dost smile,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But know not who thou art, nor why thou hast,<br />
Spirit august, thy station in the sphere<br />
That veils itself to men in alien rays.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This said I in direction of the light<br />
Which first had spoken to me; whence it became<br />
By far more lucent than it was before.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself<br />
By too much light, when heat has worn away<br />
The tempering influence of the vapours dense,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
By greater rapture thus concealed itself<br />
In its own radiance the figure saintly,<br />
And thus close, close enfolded answered me
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In fashion as the following Canto sings.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.VI"></a>Paradiso: Canto VI</h2>
<p class="noindent">
“After that Constantine the eagle turned<br />
Against the course of heaven, which it had followed<br />
Behind the ancient who Lavinia took,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Two hundred years and more the bird of God<br />
In the extreme of Europe held itself,<br />
Near to the mountains whence it issued first;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And under shadow of the sacred plumes<br />
It governed there the world from hand to hand,<br />
And, changing thus, upon mine own alighted.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Caesar I was, and am Justinian,<br />
Who, by the will of primal Love I feel,<br />
Took from the laws the useless and redundant;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And ere unto the work I was attent,<br />
One nature to exist in Christ, not more,<br />
Believed, and with such faith was I contented.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But blessed Agapetus, he who was<br />
The supreme pastor, to the faith sincere<br />
Pointed me out the way by words of his.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Him I believed, and what was his assertion<br />
I now see clearly, even as thou seest<br />
Each contradiction to be false and true.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As soon as with the Church I moved my feet,<br />
God in his grace it pleased with this high task<br />
To inspire me, and I gave me wholly to it,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And to my Belisarius I commended<br />
The arms, to which was heaven’s right hand so joined<br />
It was a signal that I should repose.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now here to the first question terminates<br />
My answer; but the character thereof<br />
Constrains me to continue with a sequel,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In order that thou see with how great reason<br />
Men move against the standard sacrosanct,<br />
Both who appropriate and who oppose it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Behold how great a power has made it worthy<br />
Of reverence, beginning from the hour<br />
When Pallas died to give it sovereignty.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou knowest it made in Alba its abode<br />
Three hundred years and upward, till at last<br />
The three to three fought for it yet again.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou knowest what it achieved from Sabine wrong<br />
Down to Lucretia’s sorrow, in seven kings<br />
O’ercoming round about the neighboring nations;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou knowest what it achieved, borne by the Romans<br />
Illustrious against Brennus, against Pyrrhus,<br />
Against the other princes and confederates.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Torquatus thence and Quinctius, who from locks<br />
Unkempt was named, Decii and Fabii,<br />
Received the fame I willingly embalm;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It struck to earth the pride of the Arabians,<br />
Who, following Hannibal, had passed across<br />
The Alpine ridges, Po, from which thou glidest;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Beneath it triumphed while they yet were young<br />
Pompey and Scipio, and to the hill<br />
Beneath which thou wast born it bitter seemed;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then, near unto the time when heaven had willed<br />
To bring the whole world to its mood serene,<br />
Did Caesar by the will of Rome assume it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
What it achieved from Var unto the Rhine,<br />
Isere beheld and Saone, beheld the Seine,<br />
And every valley whence the Rhone is filled;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
What it achieved when it had left Ravenna,<br />
And leaped the Rubicon, was such a flight<br />
That neither tongue nor pen could follow it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Round towards Spain it wheeled its legions; then<br />
Towards Durazzo, and Pharsalia smote<br />
That to the calid Nile was felt the pain.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Antandros and the Simois, whence it started,<br />
It saw again, and there where Hector lies,<br />
And ill for Ptolemy then roused itself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From thence it came like lightning upon Juba;<br />
Then wheeled itself again into your West,<br />
Where the Pompeian clarion it heard.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From what it wrought with the next standard-bearer<br />
Brutus and Cassius howl in Hell together,<br />
And Modena and Perugia dolent were;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Still doth the mournful Cleopatra weep<br />
Because thereof, who, fleeing from before it,<br />
Took from the adder sudden and black death.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With him it ran even to the Red Sea shore;<br />
With him it placed the world in so great peace,<br />
That unto Janus was his temple closed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But what the standard that has made me speak<br />
Achieved before, and after should achieve<br />
Throughout the mortal realm that lies beneath it,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Becometh in appearance mean and dim,<br />
If in the hand of the third Caesar seen<br />
With eye unclouded and affection pure,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because the living Justice that inspires me<br />
Granted it, in the hand of him I speak of,<br />
The glory of doing vengeance for its wrath.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now here attend to what I answer thee;<br />
Later it ran with Titus to do vengeance<br />
Upon the vengeance of the ancient sin.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And when the tooth of Lombardy had bitten<br />
The Holy Church, then underneath its wings<br />
Did Charlemagne victorious succor her.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now hast thou power to judge of such as those<br />
Whom I accused above, and of their crimes,<br />
Which are the cause of all your miseries.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To the public standard one the yellow lilies<br />
Opposes, the other claims it for a party,<br />
So that ’tis hard to see which sins the most.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Let, let the Ghibellines ply their handicraft<br />
Beneath some other standard; for this ever<br />
Ill follows he who it and justice parts.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And let not this new Charles e’er strike it down,<br />
He and his Guelfs, but let him fear the talons<br />
That from a nobler lion stripped the fell.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Already oftentimes the sons have wept<br />
The father’s crime; and let him not believe<br />
That God will change His scutcheon for the lilies.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This little planet doth adorn itself<br />
With the good spirits that have active been,<br />
That fame and honour might come after them;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And whensoever the desires mount thither,<br />
Thus deviating, must perforce the rays<br />
Of the true love less vividly mount upward.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But in commensuration of our wages<br />
With our desert is portion of our joy,<br />
Because we see them neither less nor greater.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Herein doth living Justice sweeten so<br />
Affection in us, that for evermore<br />
It cannot warp to any iniquity.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Voices diverse make up sweet melodies;<br />
So in this life of ours the seats diverse<br />
Render sweet harmony among these spheres;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in the compass of this present pearl<br />
Shineth the sheen of Romeo, of whom<br />
The grand and beauteous work was ill rewarded.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But the Provencals who against him wrought,<br />
They have not laughed, and therefore ill goes he<br />
Who makes his hurt of the good deeds of others.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Four daughters, and each one of them a queen,<br />
Had Raymond Berenger, and this for him<br />
Did Romeo, a poor man and a pilgrim;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And then malicious words incited him<br />
To summon to a reckoning this just man,<br />
Who rendered to him seven and five for ten.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then he departed poor and stricken in years,<br />
And if the world could know the heart he had,<br />
In begging bit by bit his livelihood,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Though much it laud him, it would laud him more.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.VII"></a>Paradiso: Canto VII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
“Osanna sanctus Deus Sabaoth,<br />
Superillustrans claritate tua<br />
Felices ignes horum malahoth!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In this wise, to his melody returning,<br />
This substance, upon which a double light<br />
Doubles itself, was seen by me to sing,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And to their dance this and the others moved,<br />
And in the manner of swift-hurrying sparks<br />
Veiled themselves from me with a sudden distance.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Doubting was I, and saying, “Tell her, tell her,”<br />
Within me, “tell her,” saying, “tell my Lady,”<br />
Who slakes my thirst with her sweet effluences;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And yet that reverence which doth lord it over<br />
The whole of me only by B and ICE,<br />
Bowed me again like unto one who drowses.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Short while did Beatrice endure me thus;<br />
And she began, lighting me with a smile<br />
Such as would make one happy in the fire:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“According to infallible advisement,<br />
After what manner a just vengeance justly<br />
Could be avenged has put thee upon thinking,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But I will speedily thy mind unloose;<br />
And do thou listen, for these words of mine<br />
Of a great doctrine will a present make thee.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
By not enduring on the power that wills<br />
Curb for his good, that man who ne’er was born,<br />
Damning himself damned all his progeny;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whereby the human species down below<br />
Lay sick for many centuries in great error,<br />
Till to descend it pleased the Word of God
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To where the nature, which from its own Maker<br />
Estranged itself, he joined to him in person<br />
By the sole act of his eternal love.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now unto what is said direct thy sight;<br />
This nature when united to its Maker,<br />
Such as created, was sincere and good;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But by itself alone was banished forth<br />
From Paradise, because it turned aside<br />
Out of the way of truth and of its life.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore the penalty the cross held out,<br />
If measured by the nature thus assumed,<br />
None ever yet with so great justice stung,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And none was ever of so great injustice,<br />
Considering who the Person was that suffered,<br />
Within whom such a nature was contracted.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From one act therefore issued things diverse;<br />
To God and to the Jews one death was pleasing;<br />
Earth trembled at it and the Heaven was opened.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It should no longer now seem difficult<br />
To thee, when it is said that a just vengeance<br />
By a just court was afterward avenged.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But now do I behold thy mind entangled<br />
From thought to thought within a knot, from which<br />
With great desire it waits to free itself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou sayest, ‘Well discern I what I hear;<br />
But it is hidden from me why God willed<br />
For our redemption only this one mode.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Buried remaineth, brother, this decree<br />
Unto the eyes of every one whose nature<br />
Is in the flame of love not yet adult.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Verily, inasmuch as at this mark<br />
One gazes long and little is discerned,<br />
Wherefore this mode was worthiest will I say.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Goodness Divine, which from itself doth spurn<br />
All envy, burning in itself so sparkles<br />
That the eternal beauties it unfolds.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whate’er from this immediately distils<br />
Has afterwards no end, for ne’er removed<br />
Is its impression when it sets its seal.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whate’er from this immediately rains down<br />
Is wholly free, because it is not subject<br />
Unto the influences of novel things.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The more conformed thereto, the more it pleases;<br />
For the blest ardour that irradiates all things<br />
In that most like itself is most vivacious.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With all of these things has advantaged been<br />
The human creature; and if one be wanting,<br />
From his nobility he needs must fall.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
’Tis sin alone which doth disfranchise him,<br />
And render him unlike the Good Supreme,<br />
So that he little with its light is blanched,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And to his dignity no more returns,<br />
Unless he fill up where transgression empties<br />
With righteous pains for criminal delights.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Your nature when it sinned so utterly<br />
In its own seed, out of these dignities<br />
Even as out of Paradise was driven,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor could itself recover, if thou notest<br />
With nicest subtilty, by any way,<br />
Except by passing one of these two fords:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Either that God through clemency alone<br />
Had pardon granted, or that man himself<br />
Had satisfaction for his folly made.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Fix now thine eye deep into the abyss<br />
Of the eternal counsel, to my speech<br />
As far as may be fastened steadfastly!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Man in his limitations had not power<br />
To satisfy, not having power to sink<br />
In his humility obeying then,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Far as he disobeying thought to rise;<br />
And for this reason man has been from power<br />
Of satisfying by himself excluded.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore it God behoved in his own ways<br />
Man to restore unto his perfect life,<br />
I say in one, or else in both of them.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But since the action of the doer is<br />
So much more grateful, as it more presents<br />
The goodness of the heart from which it issues,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Goodness Divine, that doth imprint the world,<br />
Has been contented to proceed by each<br />
And all its ways to lift you up again;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor ’twixt the first day and the final night<br />
Such high and such magnificent proceeding<br />
By one or by the other was or shall be;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For God more bounteous was himself to give<br />
To make man able to uplift himself,<br />
Than if he only of himself had pardoned;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And all the other modes were insufficient<br />
For justice, were it not the Son of God<br />
Himself had humbled to become incarnate.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now, to fill fully each desire of thine,<br />
Return I to elucidate one place,<br />
In order that thou there mayst see as I do.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou sayst: ‘I see the air, I see the fire,<br />
The water, and the earth, and all their mixtures<br />
Come to corruption, and short while endure;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And these things notwithstanding were created;’<br />
Therefore if that which I have said were true,<br />
They should have been secure against corruption.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The Angels, brother, and the land sincere<br />
In which thou art, created may be called<br />
Just as they are in their entire existence;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But all the elements which thou hast named,<br />
And all those things which out of them are made,<br />
By a created virtue are informed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Created was the matter which they have;<br />
Created was the informing influence<br />
Within these stars that round about them go.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The soul of every brute and of the plants<br />
By its potential temperament attracts<br />
The ray and motion of the holy lights;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But your own life immediately inspires<br />
Supreme Beneficence, and enamours it<br />
So with herself, it evermore desires her.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And thou from this mayst argue furthermore<br />
Your resurrection, if thou think again<br />
How human flesh was fashioned at that time
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When the first parents both of them were made.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.VIII"></a>Paradiso: Canto VIII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
The world used in its peril to believe<br />
That the fair Cypria delirious love<br />
Rayed out, in the third epicycle turning;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Wherefore not only unto her paid honour<br />
Of sacrifices and of votive cry<br />
The ancient nations in the ancient error,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But both Dione honoured they and Cupid,<br />
That as her mother, this one as her son,<br />
And said that he had sat in Dido’s lap;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And they from her, whence I beginning take,<br />
Took the denomination of the star<br />
That woos the sun, now following, now in front.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I was not ware of our ascending to it;<br />
But of our being in it gave full faith<br />
My Lady whom I saw more beauteous grow.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as within a flame a spark is seen,<br />
And as within a voice a voice discerned,<br />
When one is steadfast, and one comes and goes,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within that light beheld I other lamps<br />
Move in a circle, speeding more and less,<br />
Methinks in measure of their inward vision.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From a cold cloud descended never winds,<br />
Or visible or not, so rapidly<br />
They would not laggard and impeded seem
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To any one who had those lights divine<br />
Seen come towards us, leaving the gyration<br />
Begun at first in the high Seraphim.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And behind those that most in front appeared<br />
Sounded “Osanna!” so that never since<br />
To hear again was I without desire.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then unto us more nearly one approached,<br />
And it alone began: “We all are ready<br />
Unto thy pleasure, that thou joy in us.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
We turn around with the celestial Princes,<br />
One gyre and one gyration and one thirst,<br />
To whom thou in the world of old didst say,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
‘Ye who, intelligent, the third heaven are moving;’<br />
And are so full of love, to pleasure thee<br />
A little quiet will not be less sweet.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
After these eyes of mine themselves had offered<br />
Unto my Lady reverently, and she<br />
Content and certain of herself had made them,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Back to the light they turned, which so great promise<br />
Made of itself, and “Say, who art thou?” was<br />
My voice, imprinted with a great affection.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O how and how much I beheld it grow<br />
With the new joy that superadded was<br />
Unto its joys, as soon as I had spoken!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus changed, it said to me: “The world possessed me<br />
Short time below; and, if it had been more,<br />
Much evil will be which would not have been.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My gladness keepeth me concealed from thee,<br />
Which rayeth round about me, and doth hide me<br />
Like as a creature swathed in its own silk.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Much didst thou love me, and thou hadst good reason;<br />
For had I been below, I should have shown thee<br />
Somewhat beyond the foliage of my love.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That left-hand margin, which doth bathe itself<br />
In Rhone, when it is mingled with the Sorgue,<br />
Me for its lord awaited in due time,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And that horn of Ausonia, which is towned<br />
With Bari, with Gaeta and Catona,<br />
Whence Tronto and Verde in the sea disgorge.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Already flashed upon my brow the crown<br />
Of that dominion which the Danube waters<br />
After the German borders it abandons;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And beautiful Trinacria, that is murky<br />
’Twixt Pachino and Peloro, (on the gulf<br />
Which greatest scath from Eurus doth receive,)
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not through Typhoeus, but through nascent sulphur,<br />
Would have awaited her own monarchs still,<br />
Through me from Charles descended and from Rudolph,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If evil lordship, that exasperates ever<br />
The subject populations, had not moved<br />
Palermo to the outcry of ‘Death! death!’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if my brother could but this foresee,<br />
The greedy poverty of Catalonia<br />
Straight would he flee, that it might not molest him;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For verily ’tis needful to provide,<br />
Through him or other, so that on his bark<br />
Already freighted no more freight be placed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
His nature, which from liberal covetous<br />
Descended, such a soldiery would need<br />
As should not care for hoarding in a chest.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Because I do believe the lofty joy<br />
Thy speech infuses into me, my Lord,<br />
Where every good thing doth begin and end
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou seest as I see it, the more grateful<br />
Is it to me; and this too hold I dear,<br />
That gazing upon God thou dost discern it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Glad hast thou made me; so make clear to me,<br />
Since speaking thou hast stirred me up to doubt,<br />
How from sweet seed can bitter issue forth.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This I to him; and he to me: “If I<br />
Can show to thee a truth, to what thou askest<br />
Thy face thou’lt hold as thou dost hold thy back.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The Good which all the realm thou art ascending<br />
Turns and contents, maketh its providence<br />
To be a power within these bodies vast;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And not alone the natures are foreseen<br />
Within the mind that in itself is perfect,<br />
But they together with their preservation.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For whatsoever thing this bow shoots forth<br />
Falls foreordained unto an end foreseen,<br />
Even as a shaft directed to its mark.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If that were not, the heaven which thou dost walk<br />
Would in such manner its effects produce,<br />
That they no longer would be arts, but ruins.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This cannot be, if the Intelligences<br />
That keep these stars in motion are not maimed,<br />
And maimed the First that has not made them perfect.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Wilt thou this truth have clearer made to thee?”<br />
And I: “Not so; for ’tis impossible<br />
That nature tire, I see, in what is needful.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence he again: “Now say, would it be worse<br />
For men on earth were they not citizens?”<br />
“Yes,” I replied; “and here I ask no reason.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“And can they be so, if below they live not<br />
Diversely unto offices diverse?<br />
No, if your master writeth well for you.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So came he with deductions to this point;<br />
Then he concluded: “Therefore it behoves<br />
The roots of your effects to be diverse.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hence one is Solon born, another Xerxes,<br />
Another Melchisedec, and another he<br />
Who, flying through the air, his son did lose.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Revolving Nature, which a signet is<br />
To mortal wax, doth practise well her art,<br />
But not one inn distinguish from another;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thence happens it that Esau differeth<br />
In seed from Jacob; and Quirinus comes<br />
From sire so vile that he is given to Mars.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
A generated nature its own way<br />
Would always make like its progenitors,<br />
If Providence divine were not triumphant.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now that which was behind thee is before thee;<br />
But that thou know that I with thee am pleased,<br />
With a corollary will I mantle thee.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Evermore nature, if it fortune find<br />
Discordant to it, like each other seed<br />
Out of its region, maketh evil thrift;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if the world below would fix its mind<br />
On the foundation which is laid by nature,<br />
Pursuing that, ’twould have the people good.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But you unto religion wrench aside<br />
Him who was born to gird him with the sword,<br />
And make a king of him who is for sermons;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore your footsteps wander from the road.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.IX"></a>Paradiso: Canto IX</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Beautiful Clemence, after that thy Charles<br />
Had me enlightened, he narrated to me<br />
The treacheries his seed should undergo;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But said: “Be still and let the years roll round;”<br />
So I can only say, that lamentation<br />
Legitimate shall follow on your wrongs.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And of that holy light the life already<br />
Had to the Sun which fills it turned again,<br />
As to that good which for each thing sufficeth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ah, souls deceived, and creatures impious,<br />
Who from such good do turn away your hearts,<br />
Directing upon vanity your foreheads!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And now, behold, another of those splendours<br />
Approached me, and its will to pleasure me<br />
It signified by brightening outwardly.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The eyes of Beatrice, that fastened were<br />
Upon me, as before, of dear assent<br />
To my desire assurance gave to me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Ah, bring swift compensation to my wish,<br />
Thou blessed spirit,” I said, “and give me proof<br />
That what I think in thee I can reflect!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whereat the light, that still was new to me,<br />
Out of its depths, whence it before was singing,<br />
As one delighted to do good, continued:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Within that region of the land depraved<br />
Of Italy, that lies between Rialto<br />
And fountain-heads of Brenta and of Piava,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Rises a hill, and mounts not very high,<br />
Wherefrom descended formerly a torch<br />
That made upon that region great assault.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Out of one root were born both I and it;<br />
Cunizza was I called, and here I shine<br />
Because the splendour of this star o’ercame me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But gladly to myself the cause I pardon<br />
Of my allotment, and it does not grieve me;<br />
Which would perhaps seem strong unto your vulgar.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of this so luculent and precious jewel,<br />
Which of our heaven is nearest unto me,<br />
Great fame remained; and ere it die away
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This hundredth year shall yet quintupled be.<br />
See if man ought to make him excellent,<br />
So that another life the first may leave!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And thus thinks not the present multitude<br />
Shut in by Adige and Tagliamento,<br />
Nor yet for being scourged is penitent.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But soon ’twill be that Padua in the marsh<br />
Will change the water that Vicenza bathes,<br />
Because the folk are stubborn against duty;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And where the Sile and Cagnano join<br />
One lordeth it, and goes with lofty head,<br />
For catching whom e’en now the net is making.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Feltro moreover of her impious pastor<br />
Shall weep the crime, which shall so monstrous be<br />
That for the like none ever entered Malta.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ample exceedingly would be the vat<br />
That of the Ferrarese could hold the blood,<br />
And weary who should weigh it ounce by ounce,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of which this courteous priest shall make a gift<br />
To show himself a partisan; and such gifts<br />
Will to the living of the land conform.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Above us there are mirrors, Thrones you call them,<br />
From which shines out on us God Judicant,<br />
So that this utterance seems good to us.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here it was silent, and it had the semblance<br />
Of being turned elsewhither, by the wheel<br />
On which it entered as it was before.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The other joy, already known to me,<br />
Became a thing transplendent in my sight,<br />
As a fine ruby smitten by the sun.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Through joy effulgence is acquired above,<br />
As here a smile; but down below, the shade<br />
Outwardly darkens, as the mind is sad.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“God seeth all things, and in Him, blest spirit,<br />
Thy sight is,” said I, “so that never will<br />
Of his can possibly from thee be hidden;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thy voice, then, that for ever makes the heavens<br />
Glad, with the singing of those holy fires<br />
Which of their six wings make themselves a cowl,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Wherefore does it not satisfy my longings?<br />
Indeed, I would not wait thy questioning<br />
If I in thee were as thou art in me.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“The greatest of the valleys where the water<br />
Expands itself,” forthwith its words began,<br />
“That sea excepted which the earth engarlands,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Between discordant shores against the sun<br />
Extends so far, that it meridian makes<br />
Where it was wont before to make the horizon.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I was a dweller on that valley’s shore<br />
’Twixt Ebro and Magra that with journey short<br />
Doth from the Tuscan part the Genoese.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With the same sunset and same sunrise nearly<br />
Sit Buggia and the city whence I was,<br />
That with its blood once made the harbour hot.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Folco that people called me unto whom<br />
My name was known; and now with me this heaven<br />
Imprints itself, as I did once with it;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For more the daughter of Belus never burned,<br />
Offending both Sichaeus and Creusa,<br />
Than I, so long as it became my locks,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor yet that Rodophean, who deluded<br />
was by Demophoon, nor yet Alcides,<br />
When Iole he in his heart had locked.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Yet here is no repenting, but we smile,<br />
Not at the fault, which comes not back to mind,<br />
But at the power which ordered and foresaw.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here we behold the art that doth adorn<br />
With such affection, and the good discover<br />
Whereby the world above turns that below.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But that thou wholly satisfied mayst bear<br />
Thy wishes hence which in this sphere are born,<br />
Still farther to proceed behoveth me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou fain wouldst know who is within this light<br />
That here beside me thus is scintillating,<br />
Even as a sunbeam in the limpid water.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then know thou, that within there is at rest<br />
Rahab, and being to our order joined,<br />
With her in its supremest grade ’tis sealed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Into this heaven, where ends the shadowy cone<br />
Cast by your world, before all other souls<br />
First of Christ’s triumph was she taken up.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Full meet it was to leave her in some heaven,<br />
Even as a palm of the high victory<br />
Which he acquired with one palm and the other,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because she favoured the first glorious deed<br />
Of Joshua upon the Holy Land,<br />
That little stirs the memory of the Pope.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thy city, which an offshoot is of him<br />
Who first upon his Maker turned his back,<br />
And whose ambition is so sorely wept,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Brings forth and scatters the accursed flower<br />
Which both the sheep and lambs hath led astray<br />
Since it has turned the shepherd to a wolf.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For this the Evangel and the mighty Doctors<br />
Are derelict, and only the Decretals<br />
So studied that it shows upon their margins.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On this are Pope and Cardinals intent;<br />
Their meditations reach not Nazareth,<br />
There where his pinions Gabriel unfolded;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But Vatican and the other parts elect<br />
Of Rome, which have a cemetery been<br />
Unto the soldiery that followed Peter
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Shall soon be free from this adultery.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.X"></a>Paradiso: Canto X</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Looking into his Son with all the Love<br />
Which each of them eternally breathes forth,<br />
The Primal and unutterable Power
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whate’er before the mind or eye revolves<br />
With so much order made, there can be none<br />
Who this beholds without enjoying Him.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Lift up then, Reader, to the lofty wheels<br />
With me thy vision straight unto that part<br />
Where the one motion on the other strikes,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And there begin to contemplate with joy<br />
That Master’s art, who in himself so loves it<br />
That never doth his eye depart therefrom.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Behold how from that point goes branching off<br />
The oblique circle, which conveys the planets,<br />
To satisfy the world that calls upon them;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if their pathway were not thus inflected,<br />
Much virtue in the heavens would be in vain,<br />
And almost every power below here dead.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If from the straight line distant more or less<br />
Were the departure, much would wanting be<br />
Above and underneath of mundane order.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Remain now, Reader, still upon thy bench,<br />
In thought pursuing that which is foretasted,<br />
If thou wouldst jocund be instead of weary.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I’ve set before thee; henceforth feed thyself,<br />
For to itself diverteth all my care<br />
That theme whereof I have been made the scribe.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The greatest of the ministers of nature,<br />
Who with the power of heaven the world imprints<br />
And measures with his light the time for us,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With that part which above is called to mind<br />
Conjoined, along the spirals was revolving,<br />
Where each time earlier he presents himself;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I was with him; but of the ascending<br />
I was not conscious, saving as a man<br />
Of a first thought is conscious ere it come;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And Beatrice, she who is seen to pass<br />
From good to better, and so suddenly<br />
That not by time her action is expressed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
How lucent in herself must she have been!<br />
And what was in the sun, wherein I entered,<br />
Apparent not by colour but by light,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I, though I call on genius, art, and practice,<br />
Cannot so tell that it could be imagined;<br />
Believe one can, and let him long to see it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if our fantasies too lowly are<br />
For altitude so great, it is no marvel,<br />
Since o’er the sun was never eye could go.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such in this place was the fourth family<br />
Of the high Father, who forever sates it,<br />
Showing how he breathes forth and how begets.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And Beatrice began: “Give thanks, give thanks<br />
Unto the Sun of Angels, who to this<br />
Sensible one has raised thee by his grace!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Never was heart of mortal so disposed<br />
To worship, nor to give itself to God<br />
With all its gratitude was it so ready,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As at those words did I myself become;<br />
And all my love was so absorbed in Him,<br />
That in oblivion Beatrice was eclipsed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor this displeased her; but she smiled at it<br />
So that the splendour of her laughing eyes<br />
My single mind on many things divided.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Lights many saw I, vivid and triumphant,<br />
Make us a centre and themselves a circle,<br />
More sweet in voice than luminous in aspect.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus girt about the daughter of Latona<br />
We sometimes see, when pregnant is the air,<br />
So that it holds the thread which makes her zone.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within the court of Heaven, whence I return,<br />
Are many jewels found, so fair and precious<br />
They cannot be transported from the realm;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And of them was the singing of those lights.<br />
Who takes not wings that he may fly up thither,<br />
The tidings thence may from the dumb await!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As soon as singing thus those burning suns<br />
Had round about us whirled themselves three times,<br />
Like unto stars neighbouring the steadfast poles,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ladies they seemed, not from the dance released,<br />
But who stop short, in silence listening<br />
Till they have gathered the new melody.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And within one I heard beginning: “When<br />
The radiance of grace, by which is kindled<br />
True love, and which thereafter grows by loving,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within thee multiplied is so resplendent<br />
That it conducts thee upward by that stair,<br />
Where without reascending none descends,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Who should deny the wine out of his vial<br />
Unto thy thirst, in liberty were not<br />
Except as water which descends not seaward.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Fain wouldst thou know with what plants is enflowered<br />
This garland that encircles with delight<br />
The Lady fair who makes thee strong for heaven.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of the lambs was I of the holy flock<br />
Which Dominic conducteth by a road<br />
Where well one fattens if he strayeth not.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He who is nearest to me on the right<br />
My brother and master was; and he Albertus<br />
Is of Cologne, I Thomas of Aquinum.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If thou of all the others wouldst be certain,<br />
Follow behind my speaking with thy sight<br />
Upward along the blessed garland turning.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That next effulgence issues from the smile<br />
Of Gratian, who assisted both the courts<br />
In such wise that it pleased in Paradise.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The other which near by adorns our choir<br />
That Peter was who, e’en as the poor widow,<br />
Offered his treasure unto Holy Church.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The fifth light, that among us is the fairest,<br />
Breathes forth from such a love, that all the world<br />
Below is greedy to learn tidings of it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within it is the lofty mind, where knowledge<br />
So deep was put, that, if the true be true,<br />
To see so much there never rose a second.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou seest next the lustre of that taper,<br />
Which in the flesh below looked most within<br />
The angelic nature and its ministry.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within that other little light is smiling<br />
The advocate of the Christian centuries,<br />
Out of whose rhetoric Augustine was furnished.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now if thou trainest thy mind’s eye along<br />
From light to light pursuant of my praise,<br />
With thirst already of the eighth thou waitest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
By seeing every good therein exults<br />
The sainted soul, which the fallacious world<br />
Makes manifest to him who listeneth well;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The body whence ’twas hunted forth is lying<br />
Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom<br />
And banishment it came unto this peace.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
See farther onward flame the burning breath<br />
Of Isidore, of Beda, and of Richard<br />
Who was in contemplation more than man.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This, whence to me returneth thy regard,<br />
The light is of a spirit unto whom<br />
In his grave meditations death seemed slow.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It is the light eternal of Sigier,<br />
Who, reading lectures in the Street of Straw,<br />
Did syllogize invidious verities.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then, as a horologe that calleth us<br />
What time the Bride of God is rising up<br />
With matins to her Spouse that he may love her,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Wherein one part the other draws and urges,<br />
Ting! ting! resounding with so sweet a note,<br />
That swells with love the spirit well disposed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus I beheld the glorious wheel move round,<br />
And render voice to voice, in modulation<br />
And sweetness that can not be comprehended,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Excepting there where joy is made eternal.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XI"></a>Paradiso: Canto XI</h2>
<p class="noindent">
O Thou insensate care of mortal men,<br />
How inconclusive are the syllogisms<br />
That make thee beat thy wings in downward flight!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One after laws and one to aphorisms<br />
Was going, and one following the priesthood,<br />
And one to reign by force or sophistry,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And one in theft, and one in state affairs,<br />
One in the pleasures of the flesh involved<br />
Wearied himself, one gave himself to ease;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When I, from all these things emancipate,<br />
With Beatrice above there in the Heavens<br />
With such exceeding glory was received!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When each one had returned unto that point<br />
Within the circle where it was before,<br />
It stood as in a candlestick a candle;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And from within the effulgence which at first<br />
Had spoken unto me, I heard begin<br />
Smiling while it more luminous became:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Even as I am kindled in its ray,<br />
So, looking into the Eternal Light,<br />
The occasion of thy thoughts I apprehend.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou doubtest, and wouldst have me to resift<br />
In language so extended and so open<br />
My speech, that to thy sense it may be plain,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Where just before I said, ‘where well one fattens,’<br />
And where I said, ‘there never rose a second;’<br />
And here ’tis needful we distinguish well.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The Providence, which governeth the world<br />
With counsel, wherein all created vision<br />
Is vanquished ere it reach unto the bottom,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
(So that towards her own Beloved might go<br />
The bride of Him who, uttering a loud cry,<br />
Espoused her with his consecrated blood,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Self-confident and unto Him more faithful,)<br />
Two Princes did ordain in her behoof,<br />
Which on this side and that might be her guide.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The one was all seraphical in ardour;<br />
The other by his wisdom upon earth<br />
A splendour was of light cherubical.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One will I speak of, for of both is spoken<br />
In praising one, whichever may be taken,<br />
Because unto one end their labours were.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Between Tupino and the stream that falls<br />
Down from the hill elect of blessed Ubald,<br />
A fertile slope of lofty mountain hangs,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From which Perugia feels the cold and heat<br />
Through Porta Sole, and behind it weep<br />
Gualdo and Nocera their grievous yoke.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From out that slope, there where it breaketh most<br />
Its steepness, rose upon the world a sun<br />
As this one does sometimes from out the Ganges;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore let him who speaketh of that place,<br />
Say not Ascesi, for he would say little,<br />
But Orient, if he properly would speak.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He was not yet far distant from his rising<br />
Before he had begun to make the earth<br />
Some comfort from his mighty virtue feel.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For he in youth his father’s wrath incurred<br />
For certain Dame, to whom, as unto death,<br />
The gate of pleasure no one doth unlock;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And was before his spiritual court<br />
‘Et coram patre’ unto her united;<br />
Then day by day more fervently he loved her.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
She, reft of her first husband, scorned, obscure,<br />
One thousand and one hundred years and more,<br />
Waited without a suitor till he came.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Naught it availed to hear, that with Amyclas<br />
Found her unmoved at sounding of his voice<br />
He who struck terror into all the world;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Naught it availed being constant and undaunted,<br />
So that, when Mary still remained below,<br />
She mounted up with Christ upon the cross.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But that too darkly I may not proceed,<br />
Francis and Poverty for these two lovers<br />
Take thou henceforward in my speech diffuse.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Their concord and their joyous semblances,<br />
The love, the wonder, and the sweet regard,<br />
They made to be the cause of holy thoughts;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So much so that the venerable Bernard<br />
First bared his feet, and after so great peace<br />
Ran, and, in running, thought himself too slow.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O wealth unknown! O veritable good!<br />
Giles bares his feet, and bares his feet Sylvester<br />
Behind the bridegroom, so doth please the bride!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then goes his way that father and that master,<br />
He and his Lady and that family<br />
Which now was girding on the humble cord;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor cowardice of heart weighed down his brow<br />
At being son of Peter Bernardone,<br />
Nor for appearing marvellously scorned;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But regally his hard determination<br />
To Innocent he opened, and from him<br />
Received the primal seal upon his Order.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
After the people mendicant increased<br />
Behind this man, whose admirable life<br />
Better in glory of the heavens were sung,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Incoronated with a second crown<br />
Was through Honorius by the Eternal Spirit<br />
The holy purpose of this Archimandrite.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And when he had, through thirst of martyrdom,<br />
In the proud presence of the Sultan preached<br />
Christ and the others who came after him,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And, finding for conversion too unripe<br />
The folk, and not to tarry there in vain,<br />
Returned to fruit of the Italic grass,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On the rude rock ’twixt Tiber and the Arno<br />
From Christ did he receive the final seal,<br />
Which during two whole years his members bore.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When He, who chose him unto so much good,<br />
Was pleased to draw him up to the reward<br />
That he had merited by being lowly,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Unto his friars, as to the rightful heirs,<br />
His most dear Lady did he recommend,<br />
And bade that they should love her faithfully;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And from her bosom the illustrious soul<br />
Wished to depart, returning to its realm,<br />
And for its body wished no other bier.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Think now what man was he, who was a fit<br />
Companion over the high seas to keep<br />
The bark of Peter to its proper bearings.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And this man was our Patriarch; hence whoever<br />
Doth follow him as he commands can see<br />
That he is laden with good merchandise.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But for new pasturage his flock has grown<br />
So greedy, that it is impossible<br />
They be not scattered over fields diverse;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in proportion as his sheep remote<br />
And vagabond go farther off from him,<br />
More void of milk return they to the fold.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Verily some there are that fear a hurt,<br />
And keep close to the shepherd; but so few,<br />
That little cloth doth furnish forth their hoods.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now if my utterance be not indistinct,<br />
If thine own hearing hath attentive been,<br />
If thou recall to mind what I have said,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In part contented shall thy wishes be;<br />
For thou shalt see the plant that’s chipped away,<br />
And the rebuke that lieth in the words,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
‘Where well one fattens, if he strayeth not.’”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Soon as the blessed flame had taken up<br />
The final word to give it utterance,<br />
Began the holy millstone to revolve,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in its gyre had not turned wholly round,<br />
Before another in a ring enclosed it,<br />
And motion joined to motion, song to song;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Song that as greatly doth transcend our Muses,<br />
Our Sirens, in those dulcet clarions,<br />
As primal splendour that which is reflected.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as are spanned athwart a tender cloud<br />
Two rainbows parallel and like in colour,<br />
When Juno to her handmaid gives command,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
(The one without born of the one within,<br />
Like to the speaking of that vagrant one<br />
Whom love consumed as doth the sun the vapours,)
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And make the people here, through covenant<br />
God set with Noah, presageful of the world<br />
That shall no more be covered with a flood,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In such wise of those sempiternal roses<br />
The garlands twain encompassed us about,<br />
And thus the outer to the inner answered.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
After the dance, and other grand rejoicings,<br />
Both of the singing, and the flaming forth<br />
Effulgence with effulgence blithe and tender,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Together, at once, with one accord had stopped,<br />
(Even as the eyes, that, as volition moves them,<br />
Must needs together shut and lift themselves,)
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Out of the heart of one of the new lights<br />
There came a voice, that needle to the star<br />
Made me appear in turning thitherward.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And it began: “The love that makes me fair<br />
Draws me to speak about the other leader,<br />
By whom so well is spoken here of mine.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
’Tis right, where one is, to bring in the other,<br />
That, as they were united in their warfare,<br />
Together likewise may their glory shine.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The soldiery of Christ, which it had cost<br />
So dear to arm again, behind the standard<br />
Moved slow and doubtful and in numbers few,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When the Emperor who reigneth evermore<br />
Provided for the host that was in peril,<br />
Through grace alone and not that it was worthy;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And, as was said, he to his Bride brought succour<br />
With champions twain, at whose deed, at whose word<br />
The straggling people were together drawn.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within that region where the sweet west wind<br />
Rises to open the new leaves, wherewith<br />
Europe is seen to clothe herself afresh,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not far off from the beating of the waves,<br />
Behind which in his long career the sun<br />
Sometimes conceals himself from every man,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Is situate the fortunate Calahorra,<br />
Under protection of the mighty shield<br />
In which the Lion subject is and sovereign.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therein was born the amorous paramour<br />
Of Christian Faith, the athlete consecrate,<br />
Kind to his own and cruel to his foes;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And when it was created was his mind<br />
Replete with such a living energy,<br />
That in his mother her it made prophetic.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As soon as the espousals were complete<br />
Between him and the Faith at holy font,<br />
Where they with mutual safety dowered each other,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The woman, who for him had given assent,<br />
Saw in a dream the admirable fruit<br />
That issue would from him and from his heirs;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And that he might be construed as he was,<br />
A spirit from this place went forth to name him<br />
With His possessive whose he wholly was.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Dominic was he called; and him I speak of<br />
Even as of the husbandman whom Christ<br />
Elected to his garden to assist him.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Envoy and servant sooth he seemed of Christ,<br />
For the first love made manifest in him<br />
Was the first counsel that was given by Christ.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Silent and wakeful many a time was he<br />
Discovered by his nurse upon the ground,<br />
As if he would have said, ‘For this I came.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O thou his father, Felix verily!<br />
O thou his mother, verily Joanna,<br />
If this, interpreted, means as is said!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not for the world which people toil for now<br />
In following Ostiense and Taddeo,<br />
But through his longing after the true manna,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He in short time became so great a teacher,<br />
That he began to go about the vineyard,<br />
Which fadeth soon, if faithless be the dresser;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And of the See, (that once was more benignant<br />
Unto the righteous poor, not through itself,<br />
But him who sits there and degenerates,)
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not to dispense or two or three for six,<br />
Not any fortune of first vacancy,<br />
‘Non decimas quae sunt pauperum Dei,’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He asked for, but against the errant world<br />
Permission to do battle for the seed,<br />
Of which these four and twenty plants surround thee.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then with the doctrine and the will together,<br />
With office apostolical he moved,<br />
Like torrent which some lofty vein out-presses;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in among the shoots heretical<br />
His impetus with greater fury smote,<br />
Wherever the resistance was the greatest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of him were made thereafter divers runnels,<br />
Whereby the garden catholic is watered,<br />
So that more living its plantations stand.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If such the one wheel of the Biga was,<br />
In which the Holy Church itself defended<br />
And in the field its civic battle won,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Truly full manifest should be to thee<br />
The excellence of the other, unto whom<br />
Thomas so courteous was before my coming.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But still the orbit, which the highest part<br />
Of its circumference made, is derelict,<br />
So that the mould is where was once the crust.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
His family, that had straight forward moved<br />
With feet upon his footprints, are turned round<br />
So that they set the point upon the heel.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And soon aware they will be of the harvest<br />
Of this bad husbandry, when shall the tares<br />
Complain the granary is taken from them.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Yet say I, he who searcheth leaf by leaf<br />
Our volume through, would still some page discover<br />
Where he could read, ‘I am as I am wont.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
’Twill not be from Casal nor Acquasparta,<br />
From whence come such unto the written word<br />
That one avoids it, and the other narrows.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Bonaventura of Bagnoregio’s life<br />
Am I, who always in great offices<br />
Postponed considerations sinister.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here are Illuminato and Agostino,<br />
Who of the first barefooted beggars were<br />
That with the cord the friends of God became.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hugh of Saint Victor is among them here,<br />
And Peter Mangiador, and Peter of Spain,<br />
Who down below in volumes twelve is shining;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nathan the seer, and metropolitan<br />
Chrysostom, and Anselmus, and Donatus<br />
Who deigned to lay his hand to the first art;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here is Rabanus, and beside me here<br />
Shines the Calabrian Abbot Joachim,<br />
He with the spirit of prophecy endowed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To celebrate so great a paladin<br />
Have moved me the impassioned courtesy<br />
And the discreet discourses of Friar Thomas,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And with me they have moved this company.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XIII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XIII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Let him imagine, who would well conceive<br />
What now I saw, and let him while I speak<br />
Retain the image as a steadfast rock,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The fifteen stars, that in their divers regions<br />
The sky enliven with a light so great<br />
That it transcends all clusters of the air;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Let him the Wain imagine unto which<br />
Our vault of heaven sufficeth night and day,<br />
So that in turning of its pole it fails not;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Let him the mouth imagine of the horn<br />
That in the point beginneth of the axis<br />
Round about which the primal wheel revolves,—
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To have fashioned of themselves two signs in heaven,<br />
Like unto that which Minos’ daughter made,<br />
The moment when she felt the frost of death;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And one to have its rays within the other,<br />
And both to whirl themselves in such a manner<br />
That one should forward go, the other backward;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And he will have some shadowing forth of that<br />
True constellation and the double dance<br />
That circled round the point at which I was;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because it is as much beyond our wont,<br />
As swifter than the motion of the Chiana<br />
Moveth the heaven that all the rest outspeeds.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There sang they neither Bacchus, nor Apollo,<br />
But in the divine nature Persons three,<br />
And in one person the divine and human.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The singing and the dance fulfilled their measure,<br />
And unto us those holy lights gave need,<br />
Growing in happiness from care to care.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then broke the silence of those saints concordant<br />
The light in which the admirable life<br />
Of God’s own mendicant was told to me,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And said: “Now that one straw is trodden out<br />
Now that its seed is garnered up already,<br />
Sweet love invites me to thresh out the other.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Into that bosom, thou believest, whence<br />
Was drawn the rib to form the beauteous cheek<br />
Whose taste to all the world is costing dear,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And into that which, by the lance transfixed,<br />
Before and since, such satisfaction made<br />
That it weighs down the balance of all sin,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whate’er of light it has to human nature<br />
Been lawful to possess was all infused<br />
By the same power that both of them created;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And hence at what I said above dost wonder,<br />
When I narrated that no second had<br />
The good which in the fifth light is enclosed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now ope thine eyes to what I answer thee,<br />
And thou shalt see thy creed and my discourse<br />
Fit in the truth as centre in a circle.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That which can die, and that which dieth not,<br />
Are nothing but the splendour of the idea<br />
Which by his love our Lord brings into being;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because that living Light, which from its fount<br />
Effulgent flows, so that it disunites not<br />
From Him nor from the Love in them intrined,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Through its own goodness reunites its rays<br />
In nine subsistences, as in a mirror,<br />
Itself eternally remaining One.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thence it descends to the last potencies,<br />
Downward from act to act becoming such<br />
That only brief contingencies it makes;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And these contingencies I hold to be<br />
Things generated, which the heaven produces<br />
By its own motion, with seed and without.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Neither their wax, nor that which tempers it,<br />
Remains immutable, and hence beneath<br />
The ideal signet more and less shines through;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore it happens, that the selfsame tree<br />
After its kind bears worse and better fruit,<br />
And ye are born with characters diverse.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If in perfection tempered were the wax,<br />
And were the heaven in its supremest virtue,<br />
The brilliance of the seal would all appear;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But nature gives it evermore deficient,<br />
In the like manner working as the artist,<br />
Who has the skill of art and hand that trembles.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If then the fervent Love, the Vision clear,<br />
Of primal Virtue do dispose and seal,<br />
Perfection absolute is there acquired.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus was of old the earth created worthy<br />
Of all and every animal perfection;<br />
And thus the Virgin was impregnate made;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that thine own opinion I commend,<br />
That human nature never yet has been,<br />
Nor will be, what it was in those two persons.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now if no farther forth I should proceed,<br />
‘Then in what way was he without a peer?’<br />
Would be the first beginning of thy words.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But, that may well appear what now appears not,<br />
Think who he was, and what occasion moved him<br />
To make request, when it was told him, ‘Ask.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I’ve not so spoken that thou canst not see<br />
Clearly he was a king who asked for wisdom,<br />
That he might be sufficiently a king;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
’Twas not to know the number in which are<br />
The motors here above, or if ‘necesse’<br />
With a contingent e’er ‘necesse’ make,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
‘Non si est dare primum motum esse,’<br />
Or if in semicircle can be made<br />
Triangle so that it have no right angle.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence, if thou notest this and what I said,<br />
A regal prudence is that peerless seeing<br />
In which the shaft of my intention strikes.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if on ‘rose’ thou turnest thy clear eyes,<br />
Thou’lt see that it has reference alone<br />
To kings who’re many, and the good are rare.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With this distinction take thou what I said,<br />
And thus it can consist with thy belief<br />
Of the first father and of our Delight.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And lead shall this be always to thy feet,<br />
To make thee, like a weary man, move slowly<br />
Both to the Yes and No thou seest not;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For very low among the fools is he<br />
Who affirms without distinction, or denies,<br />
As well in one as in the other case;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because it happens that full often bends<br />
Current opinion in the false direction,<br />
And then the feelings bind the intellect.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Far more than uselessly he leaves the shore,<br />
(Since he returneth not the same he went,)<br />
Who fishes for the truth, and has no skill;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in the world proofs manifest thereof<br />
Parmenides, Melissus, Brissus are,<br />
And many who went on and knew not whither;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus did Sabellius, Arius, and those fools<br />
Who have been even as swords unto the Scriptures<br />
In rendering distorted their straight faces.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor yet shall people be too confident<br />
In judging, even as he is who doth count<br />
The corn in field or ever it be ripe.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For I have seen all winter long the thorn<br />
First show itself intractable and fierce,<br />
And after bear the rose upon its top;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I have seen a ship direct and swift<br />
Run o’er the sea throughout its course entire,<br />
To perish at the harbour’s mouth at last.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Let not Dame Bertha nor Ser Martin think,<br />
Seeing one steal, another offering make,<br />
To see them in the arbitrament divine;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For one may rise, and fall the other may.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XIV"></a>Paradiso: Canto XIV</h2>
<p class="noindent">
From centre unto rim, from rim to centre,<br />
In a round vase the water moves itself,<br />
As from without ’tis struck or from within.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Into my mind upon a sudden dropped<br />
What I am saying, at the moment when<br />
Silent became the glorious life of Thomas,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because of the resemblance that was born<br />
Of his discourse and that of Beatrice,<br />
Whom, after him, it pleased thus to begin:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“This man has need (and does not tell you so,<br />
Nor with the voice, nor even in his thought)<br />
Of going to the root of one truth more.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Declare unto him if the light wherewith<br />
Blossoms your substance shall remain with you<br />
Eternally the same that it is now;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if it do remain, say in what manner,<br />
After ye are again made visible,<br />
It can be that it injure not your sight.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As by a greater gladness urged and drawn<br />
They who are dancing in a ring sometimes<br />
Uplift their voices and their motions quicken;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So, at that orison devout and prompt,<br />
The holy circles a new joy displayed<br />
In their revolving and their wondrous song.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whoso lamenteth him that here we die<br />
That we may live above, has never there<br />
Seen the refreshment of the eternal rain.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The One and Two and Three who ever liveth,<br />
And reigneth ever in Three and Two and One,<br />
Not circumscribed and all things circumscribing,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Three several times was chanted by each one<br />
Among those spirits, with such melody<br />
That for all merit it were just reward;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And, in the lustre most divine of all<br />
The lesser ring, I heard a modest voice,<br />
Such as perhaps the Angel’s was to Mary,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Answer: “As long as the festivity<br />
Of Paradise shall be, so long our love<br />
Shall radiate round about us such a vesture.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Its brightness is proportioned to the ardour,<br />
The ardour to the vision; and the vision<br />
Equals what grace it has above its worth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When, glorious and sanctified, our flesh<br />
Is reassumed, then shall our persons be<br />
More pleasing by their being all complete;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For will increase whate’er bestows on us<br />
Of light gratuitous the Good Supreme,<br />
Light which enables us to look on Him;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore the vision must perforce increase,<br />
Increase the ardour which from that is kindled,<br />
Increase the radiance which from this proceeds.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But even as a coal that sends forth flame,<br />
And by its vivid whiteness overpowers it<br />
So that its own appearance it maintains,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus the effulgence that surrounds us now<br />
Shall be o’erpowered in aspect by the flesh,<br />
Which still to-day the earth doth cover up;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor can so great a splendour weary us,<br />
For strong will be the organs of the body<br />
To everything which hath the power to please us.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So sudden and alert appeared to me<br />
Both one and the other choir to say Amen,<br />
That well they showed desire for their dead bodies;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor sole for them perhaps, but for the mothers,<br />
The fathers, and the rest who had been dear<br />
Or ever they became eternal flames.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And lo! all round about of equal brightness<br />
Arose a lustre over what was there,<br />
Like an horizon that is clearing up.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as at rise of early eve begin<br />
Along the welkin new appearances,<br />
So that the sight seems real and unreal,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It seemed to me that new subsistences<br />
Began there to be seen, and make a circle<br />
Outside the other two circumferences.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O very sparkling of the Holy Spirit,<br />
How sudden and incandescent it became<br />
Unto mine eyes, that vanquished bore it not!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But Beatrice so beautiful and smiling<br />
Appeared to me, that with the other sights<br />
That followed not my memory I must leave her.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then to uplift themselves mine eyes resumed<br />
The power, and I beheld myself translated<br />
To higher salvation with my Lady only.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Well was I ware that I was more uplifted<br />
By the enkindled smiling of the star,<br />
That seemed to me more ruddy than its wont.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With all my heart, and in that dialect<br />
Which is the same in all, such holocaust<br />
To God I made as the new grace beseemed;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And not yet from my bosom was exhausted<br />
The ardour of sacrifice, before I knew<br />
This offering was accepted and auspicious;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For with so great a lustre and so red<br />
Splendours appeared to me in twofold rays,<br />
I said: “O Helios who dost so adorn them!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as distinct with less and greater lights<br />
Glimmers between the two poles of the world<br />
The Galaxy that maketh wise men doubt,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus constellated in the depths of Mars,<br />
Those rays described the venerable sign<br />
That quadrants joining in a circle make.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here doth my memory overcome my genius;<br />
For on that cross as levin gleamed forth Christ,<br />
So that I cannot find ensample worthy;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But he who takes his cross and follows Christ<br />
Again will pardon me what I omit,<br />
Seeing in that aurora lighten Christ.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From horn to horn, and ’twixt the top and base,<br />
Lights were in motion, brightly scintillating<br />
As they together met and passed each other;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus level and aslant and swift and slow<br />
We here behold, renewing still the sight,<br />
The particles of bodies long and short,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Across the sunbeam move, wherewith is listed<br />
Sometimes the shade, which for their own defence<br />
People with cunning and with art contrive.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as a lute and harp, accordant strung<br />
With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make<br />
To him by whom the notes are not distinguished,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So from the lights that there to me appeared<br />
Upgathered through the cross a melody,<br />
Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Well was I ware it was of lofty laud,<br />
Because there came to me, “Arise and conquer!”<br />
As unto him who hears and comprehends not.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So much enamoured I became therewith,<br />
That until then there was not anything<br />
That e’er had fettered me with such sweet bonds.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Perhaps my word appears somewhat too bold,<br />
Postponing the delight of those fair eyes,<br />
Into which gazing my desire has rest;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But who bethinks him that the living seals<br />
Of every beauty grow in power ascending,<br />
And that I there had not turned round to those,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Can me excuse, if I myself accuse<br />
To excuse myself, and see that I speak truly:<br />
For here the holy joy is not disclosed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because ascending it becomes more pure.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XV"></a>Paradiso: Canto XV</h2>
<p class="noindent">
A will benign, in which reveals itself<br />
Ever the love that righteously inspires,<br />
As in the iniquitous, cupidity,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Silence imposed upon that dulcet lyre,<br />
And quieted the consecrated chords,<br />
That Heaven’s right hand doth tighten and relax.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
How unto just entreaties shall be deaf<br />
Those substances, which, to give me desire<br />
Of praying them, with one accord grew silent?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
’Tis well that without end he should lament,<br />
Who for the love of thing that doth not last<br />
Eternally despoils him of that love!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As through the pure and tranquil evening air<br />
There shoots from time to time a sudden fire,<br />
Moving the eyes that steadfast were before,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And seems to be a star that changeth place,<br />
Except that in the part where it is kindled<br />
Nothing is missed, and this endureth little;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So from the horn that to the right extends<br />
Unto that cross’s foot there ran a star<br />
Out of the constellation shining there;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor was the gem dissevered from its ribbon,<br />
But down the radiant fillet ran along,<br />
So that fire seemed it behind alabaster.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus piteous did Anchises’ shade reach forward,<br />
If any faith our greatest Muse deserve,<br />
When in Elysium he his son perceived.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O sanguis meus, O superinfusa<br />
Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui<br />
Bis unquam Coeli janua reclusa?”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus that effulgence; whence I gave it heed;<br />
Then round unto my Lady turned my sight,<br />
And on this side and that was stupefied;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For in her eyes was burning such a smile<br />
That with mine own methought I touched the bottom<br />
Both of my grace and of my Paradise!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then, pleasant to the hearing and the sight,<br />
The spirit joined to its beginning things<br />
I understood not, so profound it spake;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor did it hide itself from me by choice,<br />
But by necessity; for its conception<br />
Above the mark of mortals set itself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And when the bow of burning sympathy<br />
Was so far slackened, that its speech descended<br />
Towards the mark of our intelligence,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The first thing that was understood by me<br />
Was “Benedight be Thou, O Trine and One,<br />
Who hast unto my seed so courteous been!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And it continued: “Hunger long and grateful,<br />
Drawn from the reading of the mighty volume<br />
Wherein is never changed the white nor dark,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou hast appeased, my son, within this light<br />
In which I speak to thee, by grace of her<br />
Who to this lofty flight with plumage clothed thee.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou thinkest that to me thy thought doth pass<br />
From Him who is the first, as from the unit,<br />
If that be known, ray out the five and six;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And therefore who I am thou askest not,<br />
And why I seem more joyous unto thee<br />
Than any other of this gladsome crowd.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou think’st the truth; because the small and great<br />
Of this existence look into the mirror<br />
Wherein, before thou think’st, thy thought thou showest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But that the sacred love, in which I watch<br />
With sight perpetual, and which makes me thirst<br />
With sweet desire, may better be fulfilled,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now let thy voice secure and frank and glad<br />
Proclaim the wishes, the desire proclaim,<br />
To which my answer is decreed already.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To Beatrice I turned me, and she heard<br />
Before I spake, and smiled to me a sign,<br />
That made the wings of my desire increase;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then in this wise began I: “Love and knowledge,<br />
When on you dawned the first Equality,<br />
Of the same weight for each of you became;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For in the Sun, which lighted you and burned<br />
With heat and radiance, they so equal are,<br />
That all similitudes are insufficient.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But among mortals will and argument,<br />
For reason that to you is manifest,<br />
Diversely feathered in their pinions are.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence I, who mortal am, feel in myself<br />
This inequality; so give not thanks,<br />
Save in my heart, for this paternal welcome.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Truly do I entreat thee, living topaz!<br />
Set in this precious jewel as a gem,<br />
That thou wilt satisfy me with thy name.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O leaf of mine, in whom I pleasure took<br />
E’en while awaiting, I was thine own root!”<br />
Such a beginning he in answer made me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then said to me: “That one from whom is named<br />
Thy race, and who a hundred years and more<br />
Has circled round the mount on the first cornice,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
A son of mine and thy great-grandsire was;<br />
Well it behoves thee that the long fatigue<br />
Thou shouldst for him make shorter with thy works.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Florence, within the ancient boundary<br />
From which she taketh still her tierce and nones,<br />
Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
No golden chain she had, nor coronal,<br />
Nor ladies shod with sandal shoon, nor girdle<br />
That caught the eye more than the person did.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not yet the daughter at her birth struck fear<br />
Into the father, for the time and dower<br />
Did not o’errun this side or that the measure.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
No houses had she void of families,<br />
Not yet had thither come Sardanapalus<br />
To show what in a chamber can be done;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not yet surpassed had Montemalo been<br />
By your Uccellatojo, which surpassed<br />
Shall in its downfall be as in its rise.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Bellincion Berti saw I go begirt<br />
With leather and with bone, and from the mirror<br />
His dame depart without a painted face;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And him of Nerli saw, and him of Vecchio,<br />
Contented with their simple suits of buff<br />
And with the spindle and the flax their dames.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O fortunate women! and each one was certain<br />
Of her own burial-place, and none as yet<br />
For sake of France was in her bed deserted.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One o’er the cradle kept her studious watch,<br />
And in her lullaby the language used<br />
That first delights the fathers and the mothers;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Another, drawing tresses from her distaff,<br />
Told o’er among her family the tales<br />
Of Trojans and of Fesole and Rome.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As great a marvel then would have been held<br />
A Lapo Salterello, a Cianghella,<br />
As Cincinnatus or Cornelia now.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To such a quiet, such a beautiful<br />
Life of the citizen, to such a safe<br />
Community, and to so sweet an inn,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Did Mary give me, with loud cries invoked,<br />
And in your ancient Baptistery at once<br />
Christian and Cacciaguida I became.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Moronto was my brother, and Eliseo;<br />
From Val di Pado came to me my wife,<br />
And from that place thy surname was derived.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I followed afterward the Emperor Conrad,<br />
And he begirt me of his chivalry,<br />
So much I pleased him with my noble deeds.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I followed in his train against that law’s<br />
Iniquity, whose people doth usurp<br />
Your just possession, through your Pastor’s fault.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There by that execrable race was I<br />
Released from bonds of the fallacious world,<br />
The love of which defileth many souls,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And came from martyrdom unto this peace.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XVI"></a>Paradiso: Canto XVI</h2>
<p class="noindent">
O thou our poor nobility of blood,<br />
If thou dost make the people glory in thee<br />
Down here where our affection languishes,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
A marvellous thing it ne’er will be to me;<br />
For there where appetite is not perverted,<br />
I say in Heaven, of thee I made a boast!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Truly thou art a cloak that quickly shortens,<br />
So that unless we piece thee day by day<br />
Time goeth round about thee with his shears!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With ‘You,’ which Rome was first to tolerate,<br />
(Wherein her family less perseveres,)<br />
Yet once again my words beginning made;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence Beatrice, who stood somewhat apart,<br />
Smiling, appeared like unto her who coughed<br />
At the first failing writ of Guenever.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I began: “You are my ancestor,<br />
You give to me all hardihood to speak,<br />
You lift me so that I am more than I.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So many rivulets with gladness fill<br />
My mind, that of itself it makes a joy<br />
Because it can endure this and not burst.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then tell me, my beloved root ancestral,<br />
Who were your ancestors, and what the years<br />
That in your boyhood chronicled themselves?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Tell me about the sheepfold of Saint John,<br />
How large it was, and who the people were<br />
Within it worthy of the highest seats.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As at the blowing of the winds a coal<br />
Quickens to flame, so I beheld that light<br />
Become resplendent at my blandishments.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as unto mine eyes it grew more fair,<br />
With voice more sweet and tender, but not in<br />
This modern dialect, it said to me:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“From uttering of the ‘Ave,’ till the birth<br />
In which my mother, who is now a saint,<br />
Of me was lightened who had been her burden,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Unto its Lion had this fire returned<br />
Five hundred fifty times and thirty more,<br />
To reinflame itself beneath his paw.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My ancestors and I our birthplace had<br />
Where first is found the last ward of the city<br />
By him who runneth in your annual game.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Suffice it of my elders to hear this;<br />
But who they were, and whence they thither came,<br />
Silence is more considerate than speech.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
All those who at that time were there between<br />
Mars and the Baptist, fit for bearing arms,<br />
Were a fifth part of those who now are living;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But the community, that now is mixed<br />
With Campi and Certaldo and Figghine,<br />
Pure in the lowest artisan was seen.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O how much better ’twere to have as neighbours<br />
The folk of whom I speak, and at Galluzzo<br />
And at Trespiano have your boundary,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Than have them in the town, and bear the stench<br />
Of Aguglione’s churl, and him of Signa<br />
Who has sharp eyes for trickery already.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Had not the folk, which most of all the world<br />
Degenerates, been a step-dame unto Caesar,<br />
But as a mother to her son benignant,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Some who turn Florentines, and trade and discount,<br />
Would have gone back again to Simifonte<br />
There where their grandsires went about as beggars.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
At Montemurlo still would be the Counts,<br />
The Cerchi in the parish of Acone,<br />
Perhaps in Valdigrieve the Buondelmonti.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ever the intermingling of the people<br />
Has been the source of malady in cities,<br />
As in the body food it surfeits on;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And a blind bull more headlong plunges down<br />
Than a blind lamb; and very often cuts<br />
Better and more a single sword than five.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If Luni thou regard, and Urbisaglia,<br />
How they have passed away, and how are passing<br />
Chiusi and Sinigaglia after them,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To hear how races waste themselves away,<br />
Will seem to thee no novel thing nor hard,<br />
Seeing that even cities have an end.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
All things of yours have their mortality,<br />
Even as yourselves; but it is hidden in some<br />
That a long while endure, and lives are short;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as the turning of the lunar heaven<br />
Covers and bares the shores without a pause,<br />
In the like manner fortune does with Florence.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore should not appear a marvellous thing<br />
What I shall say of the great Florentines<br />
Of whom the fame is hidden in the Past.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I saw the Ughi, saw the Catellini,<br />
Filippi, Greci, Ormanni, and Alberichi,<br />
Even in their fall illustrious citizens;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And saw, as mighty as they ancient were,<br />
With him of La Sannella him of Arca,<br />
And Soldanier, Ardinghi, and Bostichi.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Near to the gate that is at present laden<br />
With a new felony of so much weight<br />
That soon it shall be jetsam from the bark,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The Ravignani were, from whom descended<br />
The County Guido, and whoe’er the name<br />
Of the great Bellincione since hath taken.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He of La Pressa knew the art of ruling<br />
Already, and already Galigajo<br />
Had hilt and pommel gilded in his house.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Mighty already was the Column Vair,<br />
Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifant, and Barucci,<br />
And Galli, and they who for the bushel blush.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The stock from which were the Calfucci born<br />
Was great already, and already chosen<br />
To curule chairs the Sizii and Arrigucci.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O how beheld I those who are undone<br />
By their own pride! and how the Balls of Gold<br />
Florence enflowered in all their mighty deeds!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So likewise did the ancestors of those<br />
Who evermore, when vacant is your church,<br />
Fatten by staying in consistory.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The insolent race, that like a dragon follows<br />
Whoever flees, and unto him that shows<br />
His teeth or purse is gentle as a lamb,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Already rising was, but from low people;<br />
So that it pleased not Ubertin Donato<br />
That his wife’s father should make him their kin.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Already had Caponsacco to the Market<br />
From Fesole descended, and already<br />
Giuda and Infangato were good burghers.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I’ll tell a thing incredible, but true;<br />
One entered the small circuit by a gate<br />
Which from the Della Pera took its name!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Each one that bears the beautiful escutcheon<br />
Of the great baron whose renown and name<br />
The festival of Thomas keepeth fresh,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Knighthood and privilege from him received;<br />
Though with the populace unites himself<br />
To-day the man who binds it with a border.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Already were Gualterotti and Importuni;<br />
And still more quiet would the Borgo be<br />
If with new neighbours it remained unfed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The house from which is born your lamentation,<br />
Through just disdain that death among you brought<br />
And put an end unto your joyous life,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Was honoured in itself and its companions.<br />
O Buondelmonte, how in evil hour<br />
Thou fled’st the bridal at another’s promptings!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Many would be rejoicing who are sad,<br />
If God had thee surrendered to the Ema<br />
The first time that thou camest to the city.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But it behoved the mutilated stone<br />
Which guards the bridge, that Florence should provide<br />
A victim in her latest hour of peace.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With all these families, and others with them,<br />
Florence beheld I in so great repose,<br />
That no occasion had she whence to weep;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With all these families beheld so just<br />
And glorious her people, that the lily<br />
Never upon the spear was placed reversed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor by division was vermilion made.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XVII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XVII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
As came to Clymene, to be made certain<br />
Of that which he had heard against himself,<br />
He who makes fathers chary still to children,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even such was I, and such was I perceived<br />
By Beatrice and by the holy light<br />
That first on my account had changed its place.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore my Lady said to me: “Send forth<br />
The flame of thy desire, so that it issue<br />
Imprinted well with the internal stamp;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not that our knowledge may be greater made<br />
By speech of thine, but to accustom thee<br />
To tell thy thirst, that we may give thee drink.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O my beloved tree, (that so dost lift thee,<br />
That even as minds terrestrial perceive<br />
No triangle containeth two obtuse,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So thou beholdest the contingent things<br />
Ere in themselves they are, fixing thine eyes<br />
Upon the point in which all times are present,)
</p>
<p class="noindent">
While I was with Virgilius conjoined<br />
Upon the mountain that the souls doth heal,<br />
And when descending into the dead world,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Were spoken to me of my future life<br />
Some grievous words; although I feel myself<br />
In sooth foursquare against the blows of chance.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On this account my wish would be content<br />
To hear what fortune is approaching me,<br />
Because foreseen an arrow comes more slowly.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus did I say unto that selfsame light<br />
That unto me had spoken before; and even<br />
As Beatrice willed was my own will confessed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not in vague phrase, in which the foolish folk<br />
Ensnared themselves of old, ere yet was slain<br />
The Lamb of God who taketh sins away,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But with clear words and unambiguous<br />
Language responded that paternal love,<br />
Hid and revealed by its own proper smile:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Contingency, that outside of the volume<br />
Of your materiality extends not,<br />
Is all depicted in the eternal aspect.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Necessity however thence it takes not,<br />
Except as from the eye, in which ’tis mirrored,<br />
A ship that with the current down descends.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From thence, e’en as there cometh to the ear<br />
Sweet harmony from an organ, comes in sight<br />
To me the time that is preparing for thee.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As forth from Athens went Hippolytus,<br />
By reason of his step-dame false and cruel,<br />
So thou from Florence must perforce depart.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Already this is willed, and this is sought for;<br />
And soon it shall be done by him who thinks it,<br />
Where every day the Christ is bought and sold.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The blame shall follow the offended party<br />
In outcry as is usual; but the vengeance<br />
Shall witness to the truth that doth dispense it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou shalt abandon everything beloved<br />
Most tenderly, and this the arrow is<br />
Which first the bow of banishment shoots forth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou shalt have proof how savoureth of salt<br />
The bread of others, and how hard a road<br />
The going down and up another’s stairs.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And that which most shall weigh upon thy shoulders<br />
Will be the bad and foolish company<br />
With which into this valley thou shalt fall;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For all ingrate, all mad and impious<br />
Will they become against thee; but soon after<br />
They, and not thou, shall have the forehead scarlet.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of their bestiality their own proceedings<br />
Shall furnish proof; so ’twill be well for thee<br />
A party to have made thee by thyself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thine earliest refuge and thine earliest inn<br />
Shall be the mighty Lombard’s courtesy,<br />
Who on the Ladder bears the holy bird,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Who such benign regard shall have for thee<br />
That ’twixt you twain, in doing and in asking,<br />
That shall be first which is with others last.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With him shalt thou see one who at his birth<br />
Has by this star of strength been so impressed,<br />
That notable shall his achievements be.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not yet the people are aware of him<br />
Through his young age, since only nine years yet<br />
Around about him have these wheels revolved.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But ere the Gascon cheat the noble Henry,<br />
Some sparkles of his virtue shall appear<br />
In caring not for silver nor for toil.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So recognized shall his magnificence<br />
Become hereafter, that his enemies<br />
Will not have power to keep mute tongues about it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On him rely, and on his benefits;<br />
By him shall many people be transformed,<br />
Changing condition rich and mendicant;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And written in thy mind thou hence shalt bear<br />
Of him, but shalt not say it”—and things said he<br />
Incredible to those who shall be present.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then added: “Son, these are the commentaries<br />
On what was said to thee; behold the snares<br />
That are concealed behind few revolutions;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Yet would I not thy neighbours thou shouldst envy,<br />
Because thy life into the future reaches<br />
Beyond the punishment of their perfidies.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When by its silence showed that sainted soul<br />
That it had finished putting in the woof<br />
Into that web which I had given it warped,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Began I, even as he who yearneth after,<br />
Being in doubt, some counsel from a person<br />
Who seeth, and uprightly wills, and loves:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Well see I, father mine, how spurreth on<br />
The time towards me such a blow to deal me<br />
As heaviest is to him who most gives way.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore with foresight it is well I arm me,<br />
That, if the dearest place be taken from me,<br />
I may not lose the others by my songs.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Down through the world of infinite bitterness,<br />
And o’er the mountain, from whose beauteous summit<br />
The eyes of my own Lady lifted me,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And afterward through heaven from light to light,<br />
I have learned that which, if I tell again,<br />
Will be a savour of strong herbs to many.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if I am a timid friend to truth,<br />
I fear lest I may lose my life with those<br />
Who will hereafter call this time the olden.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The light in which was smiling my own treasure<br />
Which there I had discovered, flashed at first<br />
As in the sunshine doth a golden mirror;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then made reply: “A conscience overcast<br />
Or with its own or with another’s shame,<br />
Will taste forsooth the tartness of thy word;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But ne’ertheless, all falsehood laid aside,<br />
Make manifest thy vision utterly,<br />
And let them scratch wherever is the itch;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For if thine utterance shall offensive be<br />
At the first taste, a vital nutriment<br />
’Twill leave thereafter, when it is digested.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This cry of thine shall do as doth the wind,<br />
Which smiteth most the most exalted summits,<br />
And that is no slight argument of honour.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore are shown to thee within these wheels,<br />
Upon the mount and in the dolorous valley,<br />
Only the souls that unto fame are known;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because the spirit of the hearer rests not,<br />
Nor doth confirm its faith by an example<br />
Which has the root of it unknown and hidden,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Or other reason that is not apparent.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XVIII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XVIII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Now was alone rejoicing in its word<br />
That soul beatified, and I was tasting<br />
My own, the bitter tempering with the sweet,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And the Lady who to God was leading me<br />
Said: “Change thy thought; consider that I am<br />
Near unto Him who every wrong disburdens.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Unto the loving accents of my comfort<br />
I turned me round, and then what love I saw<br />
Within those holy eyes I here relinquish;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not only that my language I distrust,<br />
But that my mind cannot return so far<br />
Above itself, unless another guide it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus much upon that point can I repeat,<br />
That, her again beholding, my affection<br />
From every other longing was released.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
While the eternal pleasure, which direct<br />
Rayed upon Beatrice, from her fair face<br />
Contented me with its reflected aspect,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Conquering me with the radiance of a smile,<br />
She said to me, “Turn thee about and listen;<br />
Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as sometimes here do we behold<br />
The affection in the look, if it be such<br />
That all the soul is wrapt away by it,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So, by the flaming of the effulgence holy<br />
To which I turned, I recognized therein<br />
The wish of speaking to me somewhat farther.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And it began: “In this fifth resting-place<br />
Upon the tree that liveth by its summit,<br />
And aye bears fruit, and never loses leaf,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Are blessed spirits that below, ere yet<br />
They came to Heaven, were of such great renown<br />
That every Muse therewith would affluent be.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore look thou upon the cross’s horns;<br />
He whom I now shall name will there enact<br />
What doth within a cloud its own swift fire.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I saw athwart the Cross a splendour drawn<br />
By naming Joshua, (even as he did it,)<br />
Nor noted I the word before the deed;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And at the name of the great Maccabee<br />
I saw another move itself revolving,<br />
And gladness was the whip unto that top.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Likewise for Charlemagne and for Orlando,<br />
Two of them my regard attentive followed<br />
As followeth the eye its falcon flying.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
William thereafterward, and Renouard,<br />
And the Duke Godfrey, did attract my sight<br />
Along upon that Cross, and Robert Guiscard.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then, moved and mingled with the other lights,<br />
The soul that had addressed me showed how great<br />
An artist ’twas among the heavenly singers.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To my right side I turned myself around,<br />
My duty to behold in Beatrice<br />
Either by words or gesture signified;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And so translucent I beheld her eyes,<br />
So full of pleasure, that her countenance<br />
Surpassed its other and its latest wont.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as, by feeling greater delectation,<br />
A man in doing good from day to day<br />
Becomes aware his virtue is increasing,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So I became aware that my gyration<br />
With heaven together had increased its arc,<br />
That miracle beholding more adorned.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And such as is the change, in little lapse<br />
Of time, in a pale woman, when her face<br />
Is from the load of bashfulness unladen,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such was it in mine eyes, when I had turned,<br />
Caused by the whiteness of the temperate star,<br />
The sixth, which to itself had gathered me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within that Jovial torch did I behold<br />
The sparkling of the love which was therein<br />
Delineate our language to mine eyes.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And even as birds uprisen from the shore,<br />
As in congratulation o’er their food,<br />
Make squadrons of themselves, now round, now long,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So from within those lights the holy creatures<br />
Sang flying to and fro, and in their figures<br />
Made of themselves now D, now I, now L.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
First singing they to their own music moved;<br />
Then one becoming of these characters,<br />
A little while they rested and were silent.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O divine Pegasea, thou who genius<br />
Dost glorious make, and render it long-lived,<br />
And this through thee the cities and the kingdoms,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Illume me with thyself, that I may bring<br />
Their figures out as I have them conceived!<br />
Apparent be thy power in these brief verses!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Themselves then they displayed in five times seven<br />
Vowels and consonants; and I observed<br />
The parts as they seemed spoken unto me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
‘Diligite justitiam,’ these were<br />
First verb and noun of all that was depicted;<br />
‘Qui judicatis terram’ were the last.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereafter in the M of the fifth word<br />
Remained they so arranged, that Jupiter<br />
Seemed to be silver there with gold inlaid.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And other lights I saw descend where was<br />
The summit of the M, and pause there singing<br />
The good, I think, that draws them to itself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then, as in striking upon burning logs<br />
Upward there fly innumerable sparks,<br />
Whence fools are wont to look for auguries,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
More than a thousand lights seemed thence to rise,<br />
And to ascend, some more, and others less,<br />
Even as the Sun that lights them had allotted;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And, each one being quiet in its place,<br />
The head and neck beheld I of an eagle<br />
Delineated by that inlaid fire.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He who there paints has none to be his guide;<br />
But Himself guides; and is from Him remembered<br />
That virtue which is form unto the nest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The other beatitude, that contented seemed<br />
At first to bloom a lily on the M,<br />
By a slight motion followed out the imprint.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O gentle star! what and how many gems<br />
Did demonstrate to me, that all our justice<br />
Effect is of that heaven which thou ingemmest!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Wherefore I pray the Mind, in which begin<br />
Thy motion and thy virtue, to regard<br />
Whence comes the smoke that vitiates thy rays;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that a second time it now be wroth<br />
With buying and with selling in the temple<br />
Whose walls were built with signs and martyrdoms!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O soldiery of heaven, whom I contemplate,<br />
Implore for those who are upon the earth<br />
All gone astray after the bad example!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Once ’twas the custom to make war with swords;<br />
But now ’tis made by taking here and there<br />
The bread the pitying Father shuts from none.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Yet thou, who writest but to cancel, think<br />
That Peter and that Paul, who for this vineyard<br />
Which thou art spoiling died, are still alive!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Well canst thou say: “So steadfast my desire<br />
Is unto him who willed to live alone,<br />
And for a dance was led to martyrdom,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That I know not the Fisherman nor Paul.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XIX"></a>Paradiso: Canto XIX</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Appeared before me with its wings outspread<br />
The beautiful image that in sweet fruition<br />
Made jubilant the interwoven souls;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Appeared a little ruby each, wherein<br />
Ray of the sun was burning so enkindled<br />
That each into mine eyes refracted it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And what it now behoves me to retrace<br />
Nor voice has e’er reported, nor ink written,<br />
Nor was by fantasy e’er comprehended;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For speak I saw, and likewise heard, the beak,<br />
And utter with its voice both ‘I’ and ‘My,’<br />
When in conception it was ‘We’ and ‘Our.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And it began: “Being just and merciful<br />
Am I exalted here unto that glory<br />
Which cannot be exceeded by desire;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And upon earth I left my memory<br />
Such, that the evil-minded people there<br />
Commend it, but continue not the story.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So doth a single heat from many embers<br />
Make itself felt, even as from many loves<br />
Issued a single sound from out that image.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence I thereafter: “O perpetual flowers<br />
Of the eternal joy, that only one<br />
Make me perceive your odours manifold,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Exhaling, break within me the great fast<br />
Which a long season has in hunger held me,<br />
Not finding for it any food on earth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Well do I know, that if in heaven its mirror<br />
Justice Divine another realm doth make,<br />
Yours apprehends it not through any veil.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
You know how I attentively address me<br />
To listen; and you know what is the doubt<br />
That is in me so very old a fast.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as a falcon, issuing from his hood,<br />
Doth move his head, and with his wings applaud him,<br />
Showing desire, and making himself fine,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Saw I become that standard, which of lauds<br />
Was interwoven of the grace divine,<br />
With such songs as he knows who there rejoices.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then it began: “He who a compass turned<br />
On the world’s outer verge, and who within it<br />
Devised so much occult and manifest,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Could not the impress of his power so make<br />
On all the universe, as that his Word<br />
Should not remain in infinite excess.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And this makes certain that the first proud being,<br />
Who was the paragon of every creature,<br />
By not awaiting light fell immature.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And hence appears it, that each minor nature<br />
Is scant receptacle unto that good<br />
Which has no end, and by itself is measured.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In consequence our vision, which perforce<br />
Must be some ray of that intelligence<br />
With which all things whatever are replete,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Cannot in its own nature be so potent,<br />
That it shall not its origin discern<br />
Far beyond that which is apparent to it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore into the justice sempiternal<br />
The power of vision that your world receives,<br />
As eye into the ocean, penetrates;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Which, though it see the bottom near the shore,<br />
Upon the deep perceives it not, and yet<br />
’Tis there, but it is hidden by the depth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There is no light but comes from the serene<br />
That never is o’ercast, nay, it is darkness<br />
Or shadow of the flesh, or else its poison.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Amply to thee is opened now the cavern<br />
Which has concealed from thee the living justice<br />
Of which thou mad’st such frequent questioning.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For saidst thou: ‘Born a man is on the shore<br />
Of Indus, and is none who there can speak<br />
Of Christ, nor who can read, nor who can write;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And all his inclinations and his actions<br />
Are good, so far as human reason sees,<br />
Without a sin in life or in discourse:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He dieth unbaptised and without faith;<br />
Where is this justice that condemneth him?<br />
Where is his fault, if he do not believe?’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now who art thou, that on the bench wouldst sit<br />
In judgment at a thousand miles away,<br />
With the short vision of a single span?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Truly to him who with me subtilizes,<br />
If so the Scripture were not over you,<br />
For doubting there were marvellous occasion.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O animals terrene, O stolid minds,<br />
The primal will, that in itself is good,<br />
Ne’er from itself, the Good Supreme, has moved.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So much is just as is accordant with it;<br />
No good created draws it to itself,<br />
But it, by raying forth, occasions that.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as above her nest goes circling round<br />
The stork when she has fed her little ones,<br />
And he who has been fed looks up at her,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So lifted I my brows, and even such<br />
Became the blessed image, which its wings<br />
Was moving, by so many counsels urged.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Circling around it sang, and said: “As are<br />
My notes to thee, who dost not comprehend them,<br />
Such is the eternal judgment to you mortals.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Those lucent splendours of the Holy Spirit<br />
Grew quiet then, but still within the standard<br />
That made the Romans reverend to the world.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It recommenced: “Unto this kingdom never<br />
Ascended one who had not faith in Christ,<br />
Before or since he to the tree was nailed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But look thou, many crying are, ‘Christ, Christ!’<br />
Who at the judgment shall be far less near<br />
To him than some shall be who knew not Christ.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn,<br />
When the two companies shall be divided,<br />
The one for ever rich, the other poor.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
What to your kings may not the Persians say,<br />
When they that volume opened shall behold<br />
In which are written down all their dispraises?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There shall be seen, among the deeds of Albert,<br />
That which ere long shall set the pen in motion,<br />
For which the realm of Prague shall be deserted.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There shall be seen the woe that on the Seine<br />
He brings by falsifying of the coin,<br />
Who by the blow of a wild boar shall die.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There shall be seen the pride that causes thirst,<br />
Which makes the Scot and Englishman so mad<br />
That they within their boundaries cannot rest;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Be seen the luxury and effeminate life<br />
Of him of Spain, and the Bohemian,<br />
Who valour never knew and never wished;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Be seen the Cripple of Jerusalem,<br />
His goodness represented by an I,<br />
While the reverse an M shall represent;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Be seen the avarice and poltroonery<br />
Of him who guards the Island of the Fire,<br />
Wherein Anchises finished his long life;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And to declare how pitiful he is<br />
Shall be his record in contracted letters<br />
Which shall make note of much in little space.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And shall appear to each one the foul deeds<br />
Of uncle and of brother who a nation<br />
So famous have dishonoured, and two crowns.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And he of Portugal and he of Norway<br />
Shall there be known, and he of Rascia too,<br />
Who saw in evil hour the coin of Venice.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O happy Hungary, if she let herself<br />
Be wronged no farther! and Navarre the happy,<br />
If with the hills that gird her she be armed!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And each one may believe that now, as hansel<br />
Thereof, do Nicosia and Famagosta<br />
Lament and rage because of their own beast,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Who from the others’ flank departeth not.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XX"></a>Paradiso: Canto XX</h2>
<p class="noindent">
When he who all the world illuminates<br />
Out of our hemisphere so far descends<br />
That on all sides the daylight is consumed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The heaven, that erst by him alone was kindled,<br />
Doth suddenly reveal itself again<br />
By many lights, wherein is one resplendent.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And came into my mind this act of heaven,<br />
When the ensign of the world and of its leaders<br />
Had silent in the blessed beak become;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because those living luminaries all,<br />
By far more luminous, did songs begin<br />
Lapsing and falling from my memory.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O gentle Love, that with a smile dost cloak thee,<br />
How ardent in those sparks didst thou appear,<br />
That had the breath alone of holy thoughts!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
After the precious and pellucid crystals,<br />
With which begemmed the sixth light I beheld,<br />
Silence imposed on the angelic bells,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I seemed to hear the murmuring of a river<br />
That clear descendeth down from rock to rock,<br />
Showing the affluence of its mountain-top.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as the sound upon the cithern’s neck<br />
Taketh its form, and as upon the vent<br />
Of rustic pipe the wind that enters it,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even thus, relieved from the delay of waiting,<br />
That murmuring of the eagle mounted up<br />
Along its neck, as if it had been hollow.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There it became a voice, and issued thence<br />
From out its beak, in such a form of words<br />
As the heart waited for wherein I wrote them.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“The part in me which sees and bears the sun<br />
In mortal eagles,” it began to me,<br />
“Now fixedly must needs be looked upon;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For of the fires of which I make my figure,<br />
Those whence the eye doth sparkle in my head<br />
Of all their orders the supremest are.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He who is shining in the midst as pupil<br />
Was once the singer of the Holy Spirit,<br />
Who bore the ark from city unto city;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now knoweth he the merit of his song,<br />
In so far as effect of his own counsel,<br />
By the reward which is commensurate.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of five, that make a circle for my brow,<br />
He that approacheth nearest to my beak<br />
Did the poor widow for her son console;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now knoweth he how dearly it doth cost<br />
Not following Christ, by the experience<br />
Of this sweet life and of its opposite.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He who comes next in the circumference<br />
Of which I speak, upon its highest arc,<br />
Did death postpone by penitence sincere;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment<br />
Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer<br />
Maketh below to-morrow of to-day.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The next who follows, with the laws and me,<br />
Under the good intent that bore bad fruit<br />
Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced<br />
From his good action is not harmful to him,<br />
Although the world thereby may be destroyed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest,<br />
Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores<br />
That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is<br />
With a just king; and in the outward show<br />
Of his effulgence he reveals it still.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Who would believe, down in the errant world,<br />
That e’er the Trojan Ripheus in this round<br />
Could be the fifth one of the holy lights?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now knoweth he enough of what the world<br />
Has not the power to see of grace divine,<br />
Although his sight may not discern the bottom.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Like as a lark that in the air expatiates,<br />
First singing and then silent with content<br />
Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such seemed to me the image of the imprint<br />
Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will<br />
Doth everything become the thing it is.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And notwithstanding to my doubt I was<br />
As glass is to the colour that invests it,<br />
To wait the time in silence it endured not,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But forth from out my mouth, “What things are these?”<br />
Extorted with the force of its own weight;<br />
Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled<br />
The blessed standard made to me reply,<br />
To keep me not in wonderment suspended:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“I see that thou believest in these things<br />
Because I say them, but thou seest not how;<br />
So that, although believed in, they are hidden.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name<br />
Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity<br />
Cannot perceive, unless another show it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
‘Regnum coelorum’ suffereth violence<br />
From fervent love, and from that living hope<br />
That overcometh the Divine volition;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not in the guise that man o’ercometh man,<br />
But conquers it because it will be conquered,<br />
And conquered conquers by benignity.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth<br />
Cause thee astonishment, because with them<br />
Thou seest the region of the angels painted.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest,<br />
Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith<br />
Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For one from Hell, where no one e’er turns back<br />
Unto good will, returned unto his bones,<br />
And that of living hope was the reward,—
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of living hope, that placed its efficacy<br />
In prayers to God made to resuscitate him,<br />
So that ’twere possible to move his will.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The glorious soul concerning which I speak,<br />
Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay,<br />
Believed in Him who had the power to aid it;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And, in believing, kindled to such fire<br />
Of genuine love, that at the second death<br />
Worthy it was to come unto this joy.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The other one, through grace, that from so deep<br />
A fountain wells that never hath the eye<br />
Of any creature reached its primal wave,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Set all his love below on righteousness;<br />
Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose<br />
His eye to our redemption yet to be,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence he believed therein, and suffered not<br />
From that day forth the stench of paganism,<br />
And he reproved therefor the folk perverse.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel<br />
Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism<br />
More than a thousand years before baptizing.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O thou predestination, how remote<br />
Thy root is from the aspect of all those<br />
Who the First Cause do not behold entire!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And you, O mortals! hold yourselves restrained<br />
In judging; for ourselves, who look on God,<br />
We do not know as yet all the elect;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And sweet to us is such a deprivation,<br />
Because our good in this good is made perfect,<br />
That whatsoe’er God wills, we also will.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
After this manner by that shape divine,<br />
To make clear in me my short-sightedness,<br />
Was given to me a pleasant medicine;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as good singer a good lutanist<br />
Accompanies with vibrations of the chords,<br />
Whereby more pleasantness the song acquires,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So, while it spake, do I remember me<br />
That I beheld both of those blessed lights,<br />
Even as the winking of the eyes concords,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Moving unto the words their little flames.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXI"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXI</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Already on my Lady’s face mine eyes<br />
Again were fastened, and with these my mind,<br />
And from all other purpose was withdrawn;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And she smiled not; but “If I were to smile,”<br />
She unto me began, “thou wouldst become<br />
Like Semele, when she was turned to ashes.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because my beauty, that along the stairs<br />
Of the eternal palace more enkindles,<br />
As thou hast seen, the farther we ascend,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If it were tempered not, is so resplendent<br />
That all thy mortal power in its effulgence<br />
Would seem a leaflet that the thunder crushes.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
We are uplifted to the seventh splendour,<br />
That underneath the burning Lion’s breast<br />
Now radiates downward mingled with his power.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Fix in direction of thine eyes the mind,<br />
And make of them a mirror for the figure<br />
That in this mirror shall appear to thee.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He who could know what was the pasturage<br />
My sight had in that blessed countenance,<br />
When I transferred me to another care,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Would recognize how grateful was to me<br />
Obedience unto my celestial escort,<br />
By counterpoising one side with the other.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within the crystal which, around the world<br />
Revolving, bears the name of its dear leader,<br />
Under whom every wickedness lay dead,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Coloured like gold, on which the sunshine gleams,<br />
A stairway I beheld to such a height<br />
Uplifted, that mine eye pursued it not.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Likewise beheld I down the steps descending<br />
So many splendours, that I thought each light<br />
That in the heaven appears was there diffused.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as accordant with their natural custom<br />
The rooks together at the break of day<br />
Bestir themselves to warm their feathers cold;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then some of them fly off without return,<br />
Others come back to where they started from,<br />
And others, wheeling round, still keep at home;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such fashion it appeared to me was there<br />
Within the sparkling that together came,<br />
As soon as on a certain step it struck,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And that which nearest unto us remained<br />
Became so clear, that in my thought I said,<br />
“Well I perceive the love thou showest me;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But she, from whom I wait the how and when<br />
Of speech and silence, standeth still; whence I<br />
Against desire do well if I ask not.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
She thereupon, who saw my silentness<br />
In the sight of Him who seeth everything,<br />
Said unto me, “Let loose thy warm desire.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I began: “No merit of my own<br />
Renders me worthy of response from thee;<br />
But for her sake who granteth me the asking,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou blessed life that dost remain concealed<br />
In thy beatitude, make known to me<br />
The cause which draweth thee so near my side;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And tell me why is silent in this wheel<br />
The dulcet symphony of Paradise,<br />
That through the rest below sounds so devoutly.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Thou hast thy hearing mortal as thy sight,”<br />
It answer made to me; “they sing not here,<br />
For the same cause that Beatrice has not smiled.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus far adown the holy stairway’s steps<br />
Have I descended but to give thee welcome<br />
With words, and with the light that mantles me;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor did more love cause me to be more ready,<br />
For love as much and more up there is burning,<br />
As doth the flaming manifest to thee.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But the high charity, that makes us servants<br />
Prompt to the counsel which controls the world,<br />
Allotteth here, even as thou dost observe.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“I see full well,” said I, “O sacred lamp!<br />
How love unfettered in this court sufficeth<br />
To follow the eternal Providence;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But this is what seems hard for me to see,<br />
Wherefore predestinate wast thou alone<br />
Unto this office from among thy consorts.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
No sooner had I come to the last word,<br />
Than of its middle made the light a centre,<br />
Whirling itself about like a swift millstone.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When answer made the love that was therein:<br />
“On me directed is a light divine,<br />
Piercing through this in which I am embosomed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of which the virtue with my sight conjoined<br />
Lifts me above myself so far, I see<br />
The supreme essence from which this is drawn.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hence comes the joyfulness with which I flame,<br />
For to my sight, as far as it is clear,<br />
The clearness of the flame I equal make.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But that soul in the heaven which is most pure,<br />
That seraph which his eye on God most fixes,<br />
Could this demand of thine not satisfy;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because so deeply sinks in the abyss<br />
Of the eternal statute what thou askest,<br />
From all created sight it is cut off.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And to the mortal world, when thou returnest,<br />
This carry back, that it may not presume<br />
Longer tow’rd such a goal to move its feet.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The mind, that shineth here, on earth doth smoke;<br />
From this observe how can it do below<br />
That which it cannot though the heaven assume it?”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such limit did its words prescribe to me,<br />
The question I relinquished, and restricted<br />
Myself to ask it humbly who it was.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Between two shores of Italy rise cliffs,<br />
And not far distant from thy native place,<br />
So high, the thunders far below them sound,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And form a ridge that Catria is called,<br />
’Neath which is consecrate a hermitage<br />
Wont to be dedicate to worship only.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus unto me the third speech recommenced,<br />
And then, continuing, it said: “Therein<br />
Unto God’s service I became so steadfast,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That feeding only on the juice of olives<br />
Lightly I passed away the heats and frosts,<br />
Contented in my thoughts contemplative.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That cloister used to render to these heavens<br />
Abundantly, and now is empty grown,<br />
So that perforce it soon must be revealed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I in that place was Peter Damiano;<br />
And Peter the Sinner was I in the house<br />
Of Our Lady on the Adriatic shore.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Little of mortal life remained to me,<br />
When I was called and dragged forth to the hat<br />
Which shifteth evermore from bad to worse.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Came Cephas, and the mighty Vessel came<br />
Of the Holy Spirit, meagre and barefooted,<br />
Taking the food of any hostelry.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now some one to support them on each side<br />
The modern shepherds need, and some to lead them,<br />
So heavy are they, and to hold their trains.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
They cover up their palfreys with their cloaks,<br />
So that two beasts go underneath one skin;<br />
O Patience, that dost tolerate so much!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
At this voice saw I many little flames<br />
From step to step descending and revolving,<br />
And every revolution made them fairer.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Round about this one came they and stood still,<br />
And a cry uttered of so loud a sound,<br />
It here could find no parallel, nor I
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Distinguished it, the thunder so o’ercame me.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Oppressed with stupor, I unto my guide<br />
Turned like a little child who always runs<br />
For refuge there where he confideth most;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And she, even as a mother who straightway<br />
Gives comfort to her pale and breathless boy<br />
With voice whose wont it is to reassure him,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Said to me: “Knowest thou not thou art in heaven,<br />
And knowest thou not that heaven is holy all<br />
And what is done here cometh from good zeal?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
After what wise the singing would have changed thee<br />
And I by smiling, thou canst now imagine,<br />
Since that the cry has startled thee so much,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In which if thou hadst understood its prayers<br />
Already would be known to thee the vengeance<br />
Which thou shalt look upon before thou diest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The sword above here smiteth not in haste<br />
Nor tardily, howe’er it seem to him<br />
Who fearing or desiring waits for it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But turn thee round towards the others now,<br />
For very illustrious spirits shalt thou see,<br />
If thou thy sight directest as I say.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As it seemed good to her mine eyes I turned,<br />
And saw a hundred spherules that together<br />
With mutual rays each other more embellished.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I stood as one who in himself represses<br />
The point of his desire, and ventures not<br />
To question, he so feareth the too much.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And now the largest and most luculent<br />
Among those pearls came forward, that it might<br />
Make my desire concerning it content.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within it then I heard: “If thou couldst see<br />
Even as myself the charity that burns<br />
Among us, thy conceits would be expressed;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But, that by waiting thou mayst not come late<br />
To the high end, I will make answer even<br />
Unto the thought of which thou art so chary.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That mountain on whose slope Cassino stands<br />
Was frequented of old upon its summit<br />
By a deluded folk and ill-disposed;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I am he who first up thither bore<br />
The name of Him who brought upon the earth<br />
The truth that so much sublimateth us.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And such abundant grace upon me shone<br />
That all the neighbouring towns I drew away<br />
From the impious worship that seduced the world.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
These other fires, each one of them, were men<br />
Contemplative, enkindled by that heat<br />
Which maketh holy flowers and fruits spring up.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here is Macarius, here is Romualdus,<br />
Here are my brethren, who within the cloisters<br />
Their footsteps stayed and kept a steadfast heart.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I to him: “The affection which thou showest<br />
Speaking with me, and the good countenance<br />
Which I behold and note in all your ardours,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In me have so my confidence dilated<br />
As the sun doth the rose, when it becomes<br />
As far unfolded as it hath the power.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore I pray, and thou assure me, father,<br />
If I may so much grace receive, that I<br />
May thee behold with countenance unveiled.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He thereupon: “Brother, thy high desire<br />
In the remotest sphere shall be fulfilled,<br />
Where are fulfilled all others and my own.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There perfect is, and ripened, and complete,<br />
Every desire; within that one alone<br />
Is every part where it has always been;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For it is not in space, nor turns on poles,<br />
And unto it our stairway reaches up,<br />
Whence thus from out thy sight it steals away.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Up to that height the Patriarch Jacob saw it<br />
Extending its supernal part, what time<br />
So thronged with angels it appeared to him.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But to ascend it now no one uplifts<br />
His feet from off the earth, and now my Rule<br />
Below remaineth for mere waste of paper.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The walls that used of old to be an Abbey<br />
Are changed to dens of robbers, and the cowls<br />
Are sacks filled full of miserable flour.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But heavy usury is not taken up<br />
So much against God’s pleasure as that fruit<br />
Which maketh so insane the heart of monks;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For whatsoever hath the Church in keeping<br />
Is for the folk that ask it in God’s name,<br />
Not for one’s kindred or for something worse.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The flesh of mortals is so very soft,<br />
That good beginnings down below suffice not<br />
From springing of the oak to bearing acorns.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Peter began with neither gold nor silver,<br />
And I with orison and abstinence,<br />
And Francis with humility his convent.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if thou lookest at each one’s beginning,<br />
And then regardest whither he has run,<br />
Thou shalt behold the white changed into brown.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In verity the Jordan backward turned,<br />
And the sea’s fleeing, when God willed were more<br />
A wonder to behold, than succour here.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus unto me he said; and then withdrew<br />
To his own band, and the band closed together;<br />
Then like a whirlwind all was upward rapt.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The gentle Lady urged me on behind them<br />
Up o’er that stairway by a single sign,<br />
So did her virtue overcome my nature;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor here below, where one goes up and down<br />
By natural law, was motion e’er so swift<br />
That it could be compared unto my wing.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Reader, as I may unto that devout<br />
Triumph return, on whose account I often<br />
For my transgressions weep and beat my breast,—
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou hadst not thrust thy finger in the fire<br />
And drawn it out again, before I saw<br />
The sign that follows Taurus, and was in it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O glorious stars, O light impregnated<br />
With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge<br />
All of my genius, whatsoe’er it be,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With you was born, and hid himself with you,<br />
He who is father of all mortal life,<br />
When first I tasted of the Tuscan air;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And then when grace was freely given to me<br />
To enter the high wheel which turns you round,<br />
Your region was allotted unto me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To you devoutly at this hour my soul<br />
Is sighing, that it virtue may acquire<br />
For the stern pass that draws it to itself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Thou art so near unto the last salvation,”<br />
Thus Beatrice began, “thou oughtest now<br />
To have thine eves unclouded and acute;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And therefore, ere thou enter farther in,<br />
Look down once more, and see how vast a world<br />
Thou hast already put beneath thy feet;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that thy heart, as jocund as it may,<br />
Present itself to the triumphant throng<br />
That comes rejoicing through this rounded ether.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I with my sight returned through one and all<br />
The sevenfold spheres, and I beheld this globe<br />
Such that I smiled at its ignoble semblance;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And that opinion I approve as best<br />
Which doth account it least; and he who thinks<br />
Of something else may truly be called just.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I saw the daughter of Latona shining<br />
Without that shadow, which to me was cause<br />
That once I had believed her rare and dense.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The aspect of thy son, Hyperion,<br />
Here I sustained, and saw how move themselves<br />
Around and near him Maia and Dione.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thence there appeared the temperateness of Jove<br />
’Twixt son and father, and to me was clear<br />
The change that of their whereabout they make;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And all the seven made manifest to me<br />
How great they are, and eke how swift they are,<br />
And how they are in distant habitations.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The threshing-floor that maketh us so proud,<br />
To me revolving with the eternal Twins,<br />
Was all apparent made from hill to harbour!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then to the beauteous eyes mine eyes I turned.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXIII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXIII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Even as a bird, ’mid the beloved leaves,<br />
Quiet upon the nest of her sweet brood<br />
Throughout the night, that hideth all things from us,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Who, that she may behold their longed-for looks<br />
And find the food wherewith to nourish them,<br />
In which, to her, grave labours grateful are,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Anticipates the time on open spray<br />
And with an ardent longing waits the sun,<br />
Gazing intent as soon as breaks the dawn:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even thus my Lady standing was, erect<br />
And vigilant, turned round towards the zone<br />
Underneath which the sun displays less haste;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that beholding her distraught and wistful,<br />
Such I became as he is who desiring<br />
For something yearns, and hoping is appeased.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But brief the space from one When to the other;<br />
Of my awaiting, say I, and the seeing<br />
The welkin grow resplendent more and more.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And Beatrice exclaimed: “Behold the hosts<br />
Of Christ’s triumphal march, and all the fruit<br />
Harvested by the rolling of these spheres!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It seemed to me her face was all aflame;<br />
And eyes she had so full of ecstasy<br />
That I must needs pass on without describing.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As when in nights serene of the full moon<br />
Smiles Trivia among the nymphs eternal<br />
Who paint the firmament through all its gulfs,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Saw I, above the myriads of lamps,<br />
A Sun that one and all of them enkindled,<br />
E’en as our own doth the supernal sights,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And through the living light transparent shone<br />
The lucent substance so intensely clear<br />
Into my sight, that I sustained it not.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O Beatrice, thou gentle guide and dear!<br />
To me she said: “What overmasters thee<br />
A virtue is from which naught shields itself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There are the wisdom and the omnipotence<br />
That oped the thoroughfares ’twixt heaven and earth,<br />
For which there erst had been so long a yearning.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As fire from out a cloud unlocks itself,<br />
Dilating so it finds not room therein,<br />
And down, against its nature, falls to earth,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So did my mind, among those aliments<br />
Becoming larger, issue from itself,<br />
And that which it became cannot remember.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Open thine eyes, and look at what I am:<br />
Thou hast beheld such things, that strong enough<br />
Hast thou become to tolerate my smile.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I was as one who still retains the feeling<br />
Of a forgotten vision, and endeavours<br />
In vain to bring it back into his mind,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When I this invitation heard, deserving<br />
Of so much gratitude, it never fades<br />
Out of the book that chronicles the past.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If at this moment sounded all the tongues<br />
That Polyhymnia and her sisters made<br />
Most lubrical with their delicious milk,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To aid me, to a thousandth of the truth<br />
It would not reach, singing the holy smile<br />
And how the holy aspect it illumed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And therefore, representing Paradise,<br />
The sacred poem must perforce leap over,<br />
Even as a man who finds his way cut off;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But whoso thinketh of the ponderous theme,<br />
And of the mortal shoulder laden with it,<br />
Should blame it not, if under this it tremble.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
It is no passage for a little boat<br />
This which goes cleaving the audacious prow,<br />
Nor for a pilot who would spare himself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Why doth my face so much enamour thee,<br />
That to the garden fair thou turnest not,<br />
Which under the rays of Christ is blossoming?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There is the Rose in which the Word Divine<br />
Became incarnate; there the lilies are<br />
By whose perfume the good way was discovered.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus Beatrice; and I, who to her counsels<br />
Was wholly ready, once again betook me<br />
Unto the battle of the feeble brows.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As in the sunshine, that unsullied streams<br />
Through fractured cloud, ere now a meadow of flowers<br />
Mine eyes with shadow covered o’er have seen,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So troops of splendours manifold I saw<br />
Illumined from above with burning rays,<br />
Beholding not the source of the effulgence.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O power benignant that dost so imprint them!<br />
Thou didst exalt thyself to give more scope<br />
There to mine eyes, that were not strong enough.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The name of that fair flower I e’er invoke<br />
Morning and evening utterly enthralled<br />
My soul to gaze upon the greater fire.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And when in both mine eyes depicted were<br />
The glory and greatness of the living star<br />
Which there excelleth, as it here excelled,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Athwart the heavens a little torch descended<br />
Formed in a circle like a coronal,<br />
And cinctured it, and whirled itself about it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whatever melody most sweetly soundeth<br />
On earth, and to itself most draws the soul,<br />
Would seem a cloud that, rent asunder, thunders,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Compared unto the sounding of that lyre<br />
Wherewith was crowned the sapphire beautiful,<br />
Which gives the clearest heaven its sapphire hue.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“I am Angelic Love, that circle round<br />
The joy sublime which breathes from out the womb<br />
That was the hostelry of our Desire;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I shall circle, Lady of Heaven, while<br />
Thou followest thy Son, and mak’st diviner<br />
The sphere supreme, because thou enterest there.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus did the circulated melody<br />
Seal itself up; and all the other lights<br />
Were making to resound the name of Mary.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The regal mantle of the volumes all<br />
Of that world, which most fervid is and living<br />
With breath of God and with his works and ways,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Extended over us its inner border,<br />
So very distant, that the semblance of it<br />
There where I was not yet appeared to me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore mine eyes did not possess the power<br />
Of following the incoronated flame,<br />
Which mounted upward near to its own seed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as a little child, that towards its mother<br />
Stretches its arms, when it the milk has taken,<br />
Through impulse kindled into outward flame,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Each of those gleams of whiteness upward reached<br />
So with its summit, that the deep affection<br />
They had for Mary was revealed to me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereafter they remained there in my sight,<br />
‘Regina coeli’ singing with such sweetness,<br />
That ne’er from me has the delight departed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O, what exuberance is garnered up<br />
Within those richest coffers, which had been<br />
Good husbandmen for sowing here below!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There they enjoy and live upon the treasure<br />
Which was acquired while weeping in the exile<br />
Of Babylon, wherein the gold was left.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There triumpheth, beneath the exalted Son<br />
Of God and Mary, in his victory,<br />
Both with the ancient council and the new,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He who doth keep the keys of such a glory.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXIV"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXIV</h2>
<p class="noindent">
“O company elect to the great supper<br />
Of the Lamb benedight, who feedeth you<br />
So that for ever full is your desire,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If by the grace of God this man foretaste<br />
Something of that which falleth from your table,<br />
Or ever death prescribe to him the time,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Direct your mind to his immense desire,<br />
And him somewhat bedew; ye drinking are<br />
For ever at the fount whence comes his thought.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus Beatrice; and those souls beatified<br />
Transformed themselves to spheres on steadfast poles,<br />
Flaming intensely in the guise of comets.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as the wheels in works of horologes<br />
Revolve so that the first to the beholder<br />
Motionless seems, and the last one to fly,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So in like manner did those carols, dancing<br />
In different measure, of their affluence<br />
Give me the gauge, as they were swift or slow.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From that one which I noted of most beauty<br />
Beheld I issue forth a fire so happy<br />
That none it left there of a greater brightness;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And around Beatrice three several times<br />
It whirled itself with so divine a song,<br />
My fantasy repeats it not to me;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore the pen skips, and I write it not,<br />
Since our imagination for such folds,<br />
Much more our speech, is of a tint too glaring.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O holy sister mine, who us implorest<br />
With such devotion, by thine ardent love<br />
Thou dost unbind me from that beautiful sphere!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereafter, having stopped, the blessed fire<br />
Unto my Lady did direct its breath,<br />
Which spake in fashion as I here have said.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And she: “O light eterne of the great man<br />
To whom our Lord delivered up the keys<br />
He carried down of this miraculous joy,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This one examine on points light and grave,<br />
As good beseemeth thee, about the Faith<br />
By means of which thou on the sea didst walk.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If he love well, and hope well, and believe,<br />
From thee ’tis hid not; for thou hast thy sight<br />
There where depicted everything is seen.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But since this kingdom has made citizens<br />
By means of the true Faith, to glorify it<br />
’Tis well he have the chance to speak thereof.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As baccalaureate arms himself, and speaks not<br />
Until the master doth propose the question,<br />
To argue it, and not to terminate it,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So did I arm myself with every reason,<br />
While she was speaking, that I might be ready<br />
For such a questioner and such profession.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Say, thou good Christian; manifest thyself;<br />
What is the Faith?” Whereat I raised my brow<br />
Unto that light wherefrom was this breathed forth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then turned I round to Beatrice, and she<br />
Prompt signals made to me that I should pour<br />
The water forth from my internal fountain.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“May grace, that suffers me to make confession,”<br />
Began I, “to the great centurion,<br />
Cause my conceptions all to be explicit!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I continued: “As the truthful pen,<br />
Father, of thy dear brother wrote of it,<br />
Who put with thee Rome into the good way,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Faith is the substance of the things we hope for,<br />
And evidence of those that are not seen;<br />
And this appears to me its quiddity.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then heard I: “Very rightly thou perceivest,<br />
If well thou understandest why he placed it<br />
With substances and then with evidences.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I thereafterward: “The things profound,<br />
That here vouchsafe to me their apparition,<br />
Unto all eyes below are so concealed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That they exist there only in belief,<br />
Upon the which is founded the high hope,<br />
And hence it takes the nature of a substance.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And it behoveth us from this belief<br />
To reason without having other sight,<br />
And hence it has the nature of evidence.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then heard I: “If whatever is acquired<br />
Below by doctrine were thus understood,<br />
No sophist’s subtlety would there find place.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus was breathed forth from that enkindled love;<br />
Then added: “Very well has been gone over<br />
Already of this coin the alloy and weight;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But tell me if thou hast it in thy purse?”<br />
And I: “Yes, both so shining and so round<br />
That in its stamp there is no peradventure.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereafter issued from the light profound<br />
That there resplendent was: “This precious jewel,<br />
Upon the which is every virtue founded,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence hadst thou it?” And I: “The large outpouring<br />
Of Holy Spirit, which has been diffused<br />
Upon the ancient parchments and the new,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
A syllogism is, which proved it to me<br />
With such acuteness, that, compared therewith,<br />
All demonstration seems to me obtuse.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And then I heard: “The ancient and the new<br />
Postulates, that to thee are so conclusive,<br />
Why dost thou take them for the word divine?”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I: “The proofs, which show the truth to me,<br />
Are the works subsequent, whereunto Nature<br />
Ne’er heated iron yet, nor anvil beat.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
’Twas answered me: “Say, who assureth thee<br />
That those works ever were? the thing itself<br />
That must be proved, nought else to thee affirms it.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Were the world to Christianity converted,”<br />
I said, “withouten miracles, this one<br />
Is such, the rest are not its hundredth part;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because that poor and fasting thou didst enter<br />
Into the field to sow there the good plant,<br />
Which was a vine and has become a thorn!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This being finished, the high, holy Court<br />
Resounded through the spheres, “One God we praise!”<br />
In melody that there above is chanted.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And then that Baron, who from branch to branch,<br />
Examining, had thus conducted me,<br />
Till the extremest leaves we were approaching,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Again began: “The Grace that dallying<br />
Plays with thine intellect thy mouth has opened,<br />
Up to this point, as it should opened be,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that I do approve what forth emerged;<br />
But now thou must express what thou believest,<br />
And whence to thy belief it was presented.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O holy father, spirit who beholdest<br />
What thou believedst so that thou o’ercamest,<br />
Towards the sepulchre, more youthful feet,”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Began I, “thou dost wish me in this place<br />
The form to manifest of my prompt belief,<br />
And likewise thou the cause thereof demandest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I respond: In one God I believe,<br />
Sole and eterne, who moveth all the heavens<br />
With love and with desire, himself unmoved;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And of such faith not only have I proofs<br />
Physical and metaphysical, but gives them<br />
Likewise the truth that from this place rains down
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Through Moses, through the Prophets and the Psalms,<br />
Through the Evangel, and through you, who wrote<br />
After the fiery Spirit sanctified you;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In Persons three eterne believe, and these<br />
One essence I believe, so one and trine<br />
They bear conjunction both with ‘sunt’ and ‘est.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With the profound condition and divine<br />
Which now I touch upon, doth stamp my mind<br />
Ofttimes the doctrine evangelical.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This the beginning is, this is the spark<br />
Which afterwards dilates to vivid flame,<br />
And, like a star in heaven, is sparkling in me.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as a lord who hears what pleaseth him<br />
His servant straight embraces, gratulating<br />
For the good news as soon as he is silent;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So, giving me its benediction, singing,<br />
Three times encircled me, when I was silent,<br />
The apostolic light, at whose command
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I spoken had, in speaking I so pleased him.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXV"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXV</h2>
<p class="noindent">
If e’er it happen that the Poem Sacred,<br />
To which both heaven and earth have set their hand,<br />
So that it many a year hath made me lean,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O’ercome the cruelty that bars me out<br />
From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered,<br />
An enemy to the wolves that war upon it,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With other voice forthwith, with other fleece<br />
Poet will I return, and at my font<br />
Baptismal will I take the laurel crown;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because into the Faith that maketh known<br />
All souls to God there entered I, and then<br />
Peter for her sake thus my brow encircled.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereafterward towards us moved a light<br />
Out of that band whence issued the first-fruits<br />
Which of his vicars Christ behind him left,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And then my Lady, full of ecstasy,<br />
Said unto me: “Look, look! behold the Baron<br />
For whom below Galicia is frequented.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In the same way as, when a dove alights<br />
Near his companion, both of them pour forth,<br />
Circling about and murmuring, their affection,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So one beheld I by the other grand<br />
Prince glorified to be with welcome greeted,<br />
Lauding the food that there above is eaten.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But when their gratulations were complete,<br />
Silently ‘coram me’ each one stood still,<br />
So incandescent it o’ercame my sight.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Smiling thereafterwards, said Beatrice:<br />
“Illustrious life, by whom the benefactions<br />
Of our Basilica have been described,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Make Hope resound within this altitude;<br />
Thou knowest as oft thou dost personify it<br />
As Jesus to the three gave greater clearness.”—
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Lift up thy head, and make thyself assured;<br />
For what comes hither from the mortal world<br />
Must needs be ripened in our radiance.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This comfort came to me from the second fire;<br />
Wherefore mine eyes I lifted to the hills,<br />
Which bent them down before with too great weight.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Since, through his grace, our Emperor wills that thou<br />
Shouldst find thee face to face, before thy death,<br />
In the most secret chamber, with his Counts,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that, the truth beholden of this court,<br />
Hope, which below there rightfully enamours,<br />
Thereby thou strengthen in thyself and others,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Say what it is, and how is flowering with it<br />
Thy mind, and say from whence it came to thee.”<br />
Thus did the second light again continue.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And the Compassionate, who piloted<br />
The plumage of my wings in such high flight,<br />
Did in reply anticipate me thus:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“No child whatever the Church Militant<br />
Of greater hope possesses, as is written<br />
In that Sun which irradiates all our band;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore it is conceded him from Egypt<br />
To come into Jerusalem to see,<br />
Or ever yet his warfare be completed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The two remaining points, that not for knowledge<br />
Have been demanded, but that he report<br />
How much this virtue unto thee is pleasing,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To him I leave; for hard he will not find them,<br />
Nor of self-praise; and let him answer them;<br />
And may the grace of God in this assist him!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As a disciple, who his teacher follows,<br />
Ready and willing, where he is expert,<br />
That his proficiency may be displayed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Hope,” said I, “is the certain expectation<br />
Of future glory, which is the effect<br />
Of grace divine and merit precedent.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From many stars this light comes unto me;<br />
But he instilled it first into my heart<br />
Who was chief singer unto the chief captain.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
‘Sperent in te,’ in the high Theody<br />
He sayeth, ‘those who know thy name;’ and who<br />
Knoweth it not, if he my faith possess?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou didst instil me, then, with his instilling<br />
In the Epistle, so that I am full,<br />
And upon others rain again your rain.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
While I was speaking, in the living bosom<br />
Of that combustion quivered an effulgence,<br />
Sudden and frequent, in the guise of lightning;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then breathed: “The love wherewith I am inflamed<br />
Towards the virtue still which followed me<br />
Unto the palm and issue of the field,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Wills that I breathe to thee that thou delight<br />
In her; and grateful to me is thy telling<br />
Whatever things Hope promises to thee.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I: “The ancient Scriptures and the new<br />
The mark establish, and this shows it me,<br />
Of all the souls whom God hath made his friends.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Isaiah saith, that each one garmented<br />
In his own land shall be with twofold garments,<br />
And his own land is this delightful life.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thy brother, too, far more explicitly,<br />
There where he treateth of the robes of white,<br />
This revelation manifests to us.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And first, and near the ending of these words,<br />
“Sperent in te” from over us was heard,<br />
To which responsive answered all the carols.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereafterward a light among them brightened,<br />
So that, if Cancer one such crystal had,<br />
Winter would have a month of one sole day.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as uprises, goes, and enters the dance<br />
A winsome maiden, only to do honour<br />
To the new bride, and not from any failing,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even thus did I behold the brightened splendour<br />
Approach the two, who in a wheel revolved<br />
As was beseeming to their ardent love.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Into the song and music there it entered;<br />
And fixed on them my Lady kept her look,<br />
Even as a bride silent and motionless.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“This is the one who lay upon the breast<br />
Of him our Pelican; and this is he<br />
To the great office from the cross elected.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My Lady thus; but therefore none the more<br />
Did move her sight from its attentive gaze<br />
Before or afterward these words of hers.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as a man who gazes, and endeavours<br />
To see the eclipsing of the sun a little,<br />
And who, by seeing, sightless doth become,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So I became before that latest fire,<br />
While it was said, “Why dost thou daze thyself<br />
To see a thing which here hath no existence?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Earth in the earth my body is, and shall be<br />
With all the others there, until our number<br />
With the eternal proposition tallies.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With the two garments in the blessed cloister<br />
Are the two lights alone that have ascended:<br />
And this shalt thou take back into your world.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And at this utterance the flaming circle<br />
Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling<br />
Of sound that by the trinal breath was made,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As to escape from danger or fatigue<br />
The oars that erst were in the water beaten<br />
Are all suspended at a whistle’s sound.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed,<br />
When I turned round to look on Beatrice,<br />
That her I could not see, although I was
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Close at her side and in the Happy World!
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXVI"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXVI</h2>
<p class="noindent">
While I was doubting for my vision quenched,<br />
Out of the flame refulgent that had quenched it<br />
Issued a breathing, that attentive made me,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Saying: “While thou recoverest the sense<br />
Of seeing which in me thou hast consumed,<br />
’Tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Begin then, and declare to what thy soul<br />
Is aimed, and count it for a certainty,<br />
Sight is in thee bewildered and not dead;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because the Lady, who through this divine<br />
Region conducteth thee, has in her look<br />
The power the hand of Ananias had.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I said: “As pleaseth her, or soon or late<br />
Let the cure come to eyes that portals were<br />
When she with fire I ever burn with entered.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The Good, that gives contentment to this Court,<br />
The Alpha and Omega is of all<br />
The writing that love reads me low or loud.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The selfsame voice, that taken had from me<br />
The terror of the sudden dazzlement,<br />
To speak still farther put it in my thought;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And said: “In verity with finer sieve<br />
Behoveth thee to sift; thee it behoveth<br />
To say who aimed thy bow at such a target.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I: “By philosophic arguments,<br />
And by authority that hence descends,<br />
Such love must needs imprint itself in me;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For Good, so far as good, when comprehended<br />
Doth straight enkindle love, and so much greater<br />
As more of goodness in itself it holds;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then to that Essence (whose is such advantage<br />
That every good which out of it is found<br />
Is nothing but a ray of its own light)
</p>
<p class="noindent">
More than elsewhither must the mind be moved<br />
Of every one, in loving, who discerns<br />
The truth in which this evidence is founded.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such truth he to my intellect reveals<br />
Who demonstrates to me the primal love<br />
Of all the sempiternal substances.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The voice reveals it of the truthful Author,<br />
Who says to Moses, speaking of Himself,<br />
‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou too revealest it to me, beginning<br />
The loud Evangel, that proclaims the secret<br />
Of heaven to earth above all other edict.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I heard say: “By human intellect<br />
And by authority concordant with it,<br />
Of all thy loves reserve for God the highest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But say again if other cords thou feelest,<br />
Draw thee towards Him, that thou mayst proclaim<br />
With how many teeth this love is biting thee.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The holy purpose of the Eagle of Christ<br />
Not latent was, nay, rather I perceived<br />
Whither he fain would my profession lead.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore I recommenced: “All of those bites<br />
Which have the power to turn the heart to God<br />
Unto my charity have been concurrent.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The being of the world, and my own being,<br />
The death which He endured that I may live,<br />
And that which all the faithful hope, as I do,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With the forementioned vivid consciousness<br />
Have drawn me from the sea of love perverse,<br />
And of the right have placed me on the shore.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden<br />
Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love<br />
As much as he has granted them of good.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As soon as I had ceased, a song most sweet<br />
Throughout the heaven resounded, and my Lady<br />
Said with the others, “Holy, holy, holy!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as at some keen light one wakes from sleep<br />
By reason of the visual spirit that runs<br />
Unto the splendour passed from coat to coat,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And he who wakes abhorreth what he sees,<br />
So all unconscious is his sudden waking,<br />
Until the judgment cometh to his aid,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So from before mine eyes did Beatrice<br />
Chase every mote with radiance of her own,<br />
That cast its light a thousand miles and more.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whence better after than before I saw,<br />
And in a kind of wonderment I asked<br />
About a fourth light that I saw with us.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And said my Lady: “There within those rays<br />
Gazes upon its Maker the first soul<br />
That ever the first virtue did create.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as the bough that downward bends its top<br />
At transit of the wind, and then is lifted<br />
By its own virtue, which inclines it upward,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Likewise did I, the while that she was speaking,<br />
Being amazed, and then I was made bold<br />
By a desire to speak wherewith I burned.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I began: “O apple, that mature<br />
Alone hast been produced, O ancient father,<br />
To whom each wife is daughter and daughter-in-law,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Devoutly as I can I supplicate thee<br />
That thou wouldst speak to me; thou seest my wish;<br />
And I, to hear thee quickly, speak it not.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Sometimes an animal, when covered, struggles<br />
So that his impulse needs must be apparent,<br />
By reason of the wrappage following it;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in like manner the primeval soul<br />
Made clear to me athwart its covering<br />
How jubilant it was to give me pleasure.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then breathed: “Without thy uttering it to me,<br />
Thine inclination better I discern<br />
Than thou whatever thing is surest to thee;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For I behold it in the truthful mirror,<br />
That of Himself all things parhelion makes,<br />
And none makes Him parhelion of itself.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou fain wouldst hear how long ago God placed me<br />
Within the lofty garden, where this Lady<br />
Unto so long a stairway thee disposed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And how long to mine eyes it was a pleasure,<br />
And of the great disdain the proper cause,<br />
And the language that I used and that I made.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree<br />
Not in itself was cause of so great exile,<br />
But solely the o’erstepping of the bounds.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There, whence thy Lady moved Virgilius,<br />
Four thousand and three hundred and two circuits<br />
Made by the sun, this Council I desired;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And him I saw return to all the lights<br />
Of his highway nine hundred times and thirty,<br />
Whilst I upon the earth was tarrying.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The language that I spake was quite extinct<br />
Before that in the work interminable<br />
The people under Nimrod were employed;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For nevermore result of reasoning<br />
(Because of human pleasure that doth change,<br />
Obedient to the heavens) was durable.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
A natural action is it that man speaks;<br />
But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave<br />
To your own art, as seemeth best to you.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ere I descended to the infernal anguish,<br />
‘El’ was on earth the name of the Chief Good,<br />
From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round
</p>
<p class="noindent">
‘Eli’ he then was called, and that is proper,<br />
Because the use of men is like a leaf<br />
On bough, which goeth and another cometh.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Upon the mount that highest o’er the wave<br />
Rises was I, in life or pure or sinful,<br />
From the first hour to that which is the second,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXVII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXVII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
“Glory be to the Father, to the Son,<br />
And Holy Ghost!” all Paradise began,<br />
So that the melody inebriate made me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
What I beheld seemed unto me a smile<br />
Of the universe; for my inebriation<br />
Found entrance through the hearing and the sight.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O joy! O gladness inexpressible!<br />
O perfect life of love and peacefulness!<br />
O riches without hankering secure!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Before mine eyes were standing the four torches<br />
Enkindled, and the one that first had come<br />
Began to make itself more luminous;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And even such in semblance it became<br />
As Jupiter would become, if he and Mars<br />
Were birds, and they should interchange their feathers.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That Providence, which here distributeth<br />
Season and service, in the blessed choir<br />
Had silence upon every side imposed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When I heard say: “If I my colour change,<br />
Marvel not at it; for while I am speaking<br />
Thou shalt behold all these their colour change.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He who usurps upon the earth my place,<br />
My place, my place, which vacant has become<br />
Before the presence of the Son of God,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Has of my cemetery made a sewer<br />
Of blood and stench, whereby the Perverse One,<br />
Who fell from here, below there is appeased!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With the same colour which, through sun adverse,<br />
Painteth the clouds at evening or at morn,<br />
Beheld I then the whole of heaven suffused.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as a modest woman, who abides<br />
Sure of herself, and at another’s failing,<br />
From listening only, timorous becomes,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even thus did Beatrice change countenance;<br />
And I believe in heaven was such eclipse,<br />
When suffered the supreme Omnipotence;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thereafterward proceeded forth his words<br />
With voice so much transmuted from itself,<br />
The very countenance was not more changed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“The spouse of Christ has never nurtured been<br />
On blood of mine, of Linus and of Cletus,<br />
To be made use of in acquest of gold;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But in acquest of this delightful life<br />
Sixtus and Pius, Urban and Calixtus,<br />
After much lamentation, shed their blood.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Our purpose was not, that on the right hand<br />
Of our successors should in part be seated<br />
The Christian folk, in part upon the other;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor that the keys which were to me confided<br />
Should e’er become the escutcheon on a banner,<br />
That should wage war on those who are baptized;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor I be made the figure of a seal<br />
To privileges venal and mendacious,<br />
Whereat I often redden and flash with fire.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In garb of shepherds the rapacious wolves<br />
Are seen from here above o’er all the pastures!<br />
O wrath of God, why dost thou slumber still?
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To drink our blood the Caorsines and Gascons<br />
Are making ready. O thou good beginning,<br />
Unto how vile an end must thou needs fall!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But the high Providence, that with Scipio<br />
At Rome the glory of the world defended,<br />
Will speedily bring aid, as I conceive;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And thou, my son, who by thy mortal weight<br />
Shalt down return again, open thy mouth;<br />
What I conceal not, do not thou conceal.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As with its frozen vapours downward falls<br />
In flakes our atmosphere, what time the horn<br />
Of the celestial Goat doth touch the sun,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Upward in such array saw I the ether<br />
Become, and flaked with the triumphant vapours,<br />
Which there together with us had remained.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My sight was following up their semblances,<br />
And followed till the medium, by excess,<br />
The passing farther onward took from it;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Whereat the Lady, who beheld me freed<br />
From gazing upward, said to me: “Cast down<br />
Thy sight, and see how far thou art turned round.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Since the first time that I had downward looked,<br />
I saw that I had moved through the whole arc<br />
Which the first climate makes from midst to end;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that I saw the mad track of Ulysses<br />
Past Gades, and this side, well nigh the shore<br />
Whereon became Europa a sweet burden.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And of this threshing-floor the site to me<br />
Were more unveiled, but the sun was proceeding<br />
Under my feet, a sign and more removed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My mind enamoured, which is dallying<br />
At all times with my Lady, to bring back<br />
To her mine eyes was more than ever ardent.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if or Art or Nature has made bait<br />
To catch the eyes and so possess the mind,<br />
In human flesh or in its portraiture,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
All joined together would appear as nought<br />
To the divine delight which shone upon me<br />
When to her smiling face I turned me round.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The virtue that her look endowed me with<br />
From the fair nest of Leda tore me forth,<br />
And up into the swiftest heaven impelled me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Its parts exceeding full of life and lofty<br />
Are all so uniform, I cannot say<br />
Which Beatrice selected for my place.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But she, who was aware of my desire,<br />
Began, the while she smiled so joyously<br />
That God seemed in her countenance to rejoice:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“The nature of that motion, which keeps quiet<br />
The centre and all the rest about it moves,<br />
From hence begins as from its starting point.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in this heaven there is no other Where<br />
Than in the Mind Divine, wherein is kindled<br />
The love that turns it, and the power it rains.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within a circle light and love embrace it,<br />
Even as this doth the others, and that precinct<br />
He who encircles it alone controls.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Its motion is not by another meted,<br />
But all the others measured are by this,<br />
As ten is by the half and by the fifth.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in what manner time in such a pot<br />
May have its roots, and in the rest its leaves,<br />
Now unto thee can manifest be made.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O Covetousness, that mortals dost ingulf<br />
Beneath thee so, that no one hath the power<br />
Of drawing back his eyes from out thy waves!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Full fairly blossoms in mankind the will;<br />
But the uninterrupted rain converts<br />
Into abortive wildings the true plums.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Fidelity and innocence are found<br />
Only in children; afterwards they both<br />
Take flight or e’er the cheeks with down are covered.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One, while he prattles still, observes the fasts,<br />
Who, when his tongue is loosed, forthwith devours<br />
Whatever food under whatever moon;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Another, while he prattles, loves and listens<br />
Unto his mother, who when speech is perfect<br />
Forthwith desires to see her in her grave.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even thus is swarthy made the skin so white<br />
In its first aspect of the daughter fair<br />
Of him who brings the morn, and leaves the night.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou, that it may not be a marvel to thee,<br />
Think that on earth there is no one who governs;<br />
Whence goes astray the human family.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Ere January be unwintered wholly<br />
By the centesimal on earth neglected,<br />
Shall these supernal circles roar so loud
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The tempest that has been so long awaited<br />
Shall whirl the poops about where are the prows;<br />
So that the fleet shall run its course direct,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And the true fruit shall follow on the flower.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXVIII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXVIII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
After the truth against the present life<br />
Of miserable mortals was unfolded<br />
By her who doth imparadise my mind,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As in a looking-glass a taper’s flame<br />
He sees who from behind is lighted by it,<br />
Before he has it in his sight or thought,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And turns him round to see if so the glass<br />
Tell him the truth, and sees that it accords<br />
Therewith as doth a music with its metre,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In similar wise my memory recollecteth<br />
That I did, looking into those fair eyes,<br />
Of which Love made the springes to ensnare me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as I turned me round, and mine were touched<br />
By that which is apparent in that volume,<br />
Whenever on its gyre we gaze intent,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
A point beheld I, that was raying out<br />
Light so acute, the sight which it enkindles<br />
Must close perforce before such great acuteness.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And whatsoever star seems smallest here<br />
Would seem to be a moon, if placed beside it.<br />
As one star with another star is placed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Perhaps at such a distance as appears<br />
A halo cincturing the light that paints it,<br />
When densest is the vapour that sustains it,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus distant round the point a circle of fire<br />
So swiftly whirled, that it would have surpassed<br />
Whatever motion soonest girds the world;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And this was by another circumcinct,<br />
That by a third, the third then by a fourth,<br />
By a fifth the fourth, and then by a sixth the fifth;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The seventh followed thereupon in width<br />
So ample now, that Juno’s messenger<br />
Entire would be too narrow to contain it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even so the eighth and ninth; and every one<br />
More slowly moved, according as it was<br />
In number distant farther from the first.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And that one had its flame most crystalline<br />
From which less distant was the stainless spark,<br />
I think because more with its truth imbued.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My Lady, who in my anxiety<br />
Beheld me much perplexed, said: “From that point<br />
Dependent is the heaven and nature all.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Behold that circle most conjoined to it,<br />
And know thou, that its motion is so swift<br />
Through burning love whereby it is spurred on.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I to her: “If the world were arranged<br />
In the order which I see in yonder wheels,<br />
What’s set before me would have satisfied me;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But in the world of sense we can perceive<br />
That evermore the circles are diviner<br />
As they are from the centre more remote
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Wherefore if my desire is to be ended<br />
In this miraculous and angelic temple,<br />
That has for confines only love and light,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
To hear behoves me still how the example<br />
And the exemplar go not in one fashion,<br />
Since for myself in vain I contemplate it.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“If thine own fingers unto such a knot<br />
Be insufficient, it is no great wonder,<br />
So hard hath it become for want of trying.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My Lady thus; then said she: “Do thou take<br />
What I shall tell thee, if thou wouldst be sated,<br />
And exercise on that thy subtlety.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The circles corporal are wide and narrow<br />
According to the more or less of virtue<br />
Which is distributed through all their parts.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The greater goodness works the greater weal,<br />
The greater weal the greater body holds,<br />
If perfect equally are all its parts.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Therefore this one which sweeps along with it<br />
The universe sublime, doth correspond<br />
Unto the circle which most loves and knows.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On which account, if thou unto the virtue<br />
Apply thy measure, not to the appearance<br />
Of substances that unto thee seem round,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou wilt behold a marvellous agreement,<br />
Of more to greater, and of less to smaller,<br />
In every heaven, with its Intelligence.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as remaineth splendid and serene<br />
The hemisphere of air, when Boreas<br />
Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because is purified and resolved the rack<br />
That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs<br />
With all the beauties of its pageantry;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus did I likewise, after that my Lady<br />
Had me provided with her clear response,<br />
And like a star in heaven the truth was seen.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And soon as to a stop her words had come,<br />
Not otherwise does iron scintillate<br />
When molten, than those circles scintillated.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Their coruscation all the sparks repeated,<br />
And they so many were, their number makes<br />
More millions than the doubling of the chess.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I heard them sing hosanna choir by choir<br />
To the fixed point which holds them at the ‘Ubi,’<br />
And ever will, where they have ever been.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And she, who saw the dubious meditations<br />
Within my mind, “The primal circles,” said,<br />
“Have shown thee Seraphim and Cherubim.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus rapidly they follow their own bonds,<br />
To be as like the point as most they can,<br />
And can as far as they are high in vision.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Those other Loves, that round about them go,<br />
Thrones of the countenance divine are called,<br />
Because they terminate the primal Triad.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And thou shouldst know that they all have delight<br />
As much as their own vision penetrates<br />
The Truth, in which all intellect finds rest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From this it may be seen how blessedness<br />
Is founded in the faculty which sees,<br />
And not in that which loves, and follows next;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And of this seeing merit is the measure,<br />
Which is brought forth by grace, and by good will;<br />
Thus on from grade to grade doth it proceed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The second Triad, which is germinating<br />
In such wise in this sempiternal spring,<br />
That no nocturnal Aries despoils,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Perpetually hosanna warbles forth<br />
With threefold melody, that sounds in three<br />
Orders of joy, with which it is intrined.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The three Divine are in this hierarchy,<br />
First the Dominions, and the Virtues next;<br />
And the third order is that of the Powers.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then in the dances twain penultimate<br />
The Principalities and Archangels wheel;<br />
The last is wholly of angelic sports.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
These orders upward all of them are gazing,<br />
And downward so prevail, that unto God<br />
They all attracted are and all attract.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And Dionysius with so great desire<br />
To contemplate these Orders set himself,<br />
He named them and distinguished them as I do.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But Gregory afterwards dissented from him;<br />
Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes<br />
Within this heaven, he at himself did smile.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if so much of secret truth a mortal<br />
Proffered on earth, I would not have thee marvel,<br />
For he who saw it here revealed it to him,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With much more of the truth about these circles.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXIX"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXIX</h2>
<p class="noindent">
At what time both the children of Latona,<br />
Surmounted by the Ram and by the Scales,<br />
Together make a zone of the horizon,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As long as from the time the zenith holds them<br />
In equipoise, till from that girdle both<br />
Changing their hemisphere disturb the balance,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So long, her face depicted with a smile,<br />
Did Beatrice keep silence while she gazed<br />
Fixedly at the point which had o’ercome me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then she began: “I say, and I ask not<br />
What thou dost wish to hear, for I have seen it<br />
Where centres every When and every ‘Ubi.’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not to acquire some good unto himself,<br />
Which is impossible, but that his splendour<br />
In its resplendency may say, ‘Subsisto,’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In his eternity outside of time,<br />
Outside all other limits, as it pleased him,<br />
Into new Loves the Eternal Love unfolded.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor as if torpid did he lie before;<br />
For neither after nor before proceeded<br />
The going forth of God upon these waters.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Matter and Form unmingled and conjoined<br />
Came into being that had no defect,<br />
E’en as three arrows from a three-stringed bow.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as in glass, in amber, or in crystal<br />
A sunbeam flashes so, that from its coming<br />
To its full being is no interval,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So from its Lord did the triform effect<br />
Ray forth into its being all together,<br />
Without discrimination of beginning.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Order was con-created and constructed<br />
In substances, and summit of the world<br />
Were those wherein the pure act was produced.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Pure potentiality held the lowest part;<br />
Midway bound potentiality with act<br />
Such bond that it shall never be unbound.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Jerome has written unto you of angels<br />
Created a long lapse of centuries<br />
Or ever yet the other world was made;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But written is this truth in many places<br />
By writers of the Holy Ghost, and thou<br />
Shalt see it, if thou lookest well thereat.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And even reason seeth it somewhat,<br />
For it would not concede that for so long<br />
Could be the motors without their perfection.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now dost thou know both where and when these Loves<br />
Created were, and how; so that extinct<br />
In thy desire already are three fires.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor could one reach, in counting, unto twenty<br />
So swiftly, as a portion of these angels<br />
Disturbed the subject of your elements.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The rest remained, and they began this art<br />
Which thou discernest, with so great delight<br />
That never from their circling do they cease.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The occasion of the fall was the accursed<br />
Presumption of that One, whom thou hast seen<br />
By all the burden of the world constrained.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Those whom thou here beholdest modest were<br />
To recognise themselves as of that goodness<br />
Which made them apt for so much understanding;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On which account their vision was exalted<br />
By the enlightening grace and their own merit,<br />
So that they have a full and steadfast will.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I would not have thee doubt, but certain be,<br />
’Tis meritorious to receive this grace,<br />
According as the affection opens to it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now round about in this consistory<br />
Much mayst thou contemplate, if these my words<br />
Be gathered up, without all further aid.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But since upon the earth, throughout your schools,<br />
They teach that such is the angelic nature<br />
That it doth hear, and recollect, and will,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
More will I say, that thou mayst see unmixed<br />
The truth that is confounded there below,<br />
Equivocating in such like prelections.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
These substances, since in God’s countenance<br />
They jocund were, turned not away their sight<br />
From that wherefrom not anything is hidden;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hence they have not their vision intercepted<br />
By object new, and hence they do not need<br />
To recollect, through interrupted thought.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So that below, not sleeping, people dream,<br />
Believing they speak truth, and not believing;<br />
And in the last is greater sin and shame.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Below you do not journey by one path<br />
Philosophising; so transporteth you<br />
Love of appearance and the thought thereof.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And even this above here is endured<br />
With less disdain, than when is set aside<br />
The Holy Writ, or when it is distorted.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
They think not there how much of blood it costs<br />
To sow it in the world, and how he pleases<br />
Who in humility keeps close to it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Each striveth for appearance, and doth make<br />
His own inventions; and these treated are<br />
By preachers, and the Evangel holds its peace.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One sayeth that the moon did backward turn,<br />
In the Passion of Christ, and interpose herself<br />
So that the sunlight reached not down below;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And lies; for of its own accord the light<br />
Hid itself; whence to Spaniards and to Indians,<br />
As to the Jews, did such eclipse respond.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Florence has not so many Lapi and Bindi<br />
As fables such as these, that every year<br />
Are shouted from the pulpit back and forth,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In such wise that the lambs, who do not know,<br />
Come back from pasture fed upon the wind,<br />
And not to see the harm doth not excuse them.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Christ did not to his first disciples say,<br />
‘Go forth, and to the world preach idle tales,’<br />
But unto them a true foundation gave;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And this so loudly sounded from their lips,<br />
That, in the warfare to enkindle Faith,<br />
They made of the Evangel shields and lances.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now men go forth with jests and drolleries<br />
To preach, and if but well the people laugh,<br />
The hood puffs out, and nothing more is asked.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But in the cowl there nestles such a bird,<br />
That, if the common people were to see it,<br />
They would perceive what pardons they confide in,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For which so great on earth has grown the folly,<br />
That, without proof of any testimony,<br />
To each indulgence they would flock together.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
By this Saint Anthony his pig doth fatten,<br />
And many others, who are worse than pigs,<br />
Paying in money without mark of coinage.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But since we have digressed abundantly,<br />
Turn back thine eyes forthwith to the right path,<br />
So that the way be shortened with the time.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This nature doth so multiply itself<br />
In numbers, that there never yet was speech<br />
Nor mortal fancy that can go so far.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if thou notest that which is revealed<br />
By Daniel, thou wilt see that in his thousands<br />
Number determinate is kept concealed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The primal light, that all irradiates it,<br />
By modes as many is received therein,<br />
As are the splendours wherewith it is mated.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Hence, inasmuch as on the act conceptive<br />
The affection followeth, of love the sweetness<br />
Therein diversely fervid is or tepid.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The height behold now and the amplitude<br />
Of the eternal power, since it hath made<br />
Itself so many mirrors, where ’tis broken,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One in itself remaining as before.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXX"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXX</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Perchance six thousand miles remote from us<br />
Is glowing the sixth hour, and now this world<br />
Inclines its shadow almost to a level,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
When the mid-heaven begins to make itself<br />
So deep to us, that here and there a star<br />
Ceases to shine so far down as this depth,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as advances bright exceedingly<br />
The handmaid of the sun, the heaven is closed<br />
Light after light to the most beautiful;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not otherwise the Triumph, which for ever<br />
Plays round about the point that vanquished me,<br />
Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Little by little from my vision faded;<br />
Whereat to turn mine eyes on Beatrice<br />
My seeing nothing and my love constrained me.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If what has hitherto been said of her<br />
Were all concluded in a single praise,<br />
Scant would it be to serve the present turn.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not only does the beauty I beheld<br />
Transcend ourselves, but truly I believe<br />
Its Maker only may enjoy it all.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Vanquished do I confess me by this passage<br />
More than by problem of his theme was ever<br />
O’ercome the comic or the tragic poet;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For as the sun the sight that trembles most,<br />
Even so the memory of that sweet smile<br />
My mind depriveth of its very self.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From the first day that I beheld her face<br />
In this life, to the moment of this look,<br />
The sequence of my song has ne’er been severed;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But now perforce this sequence must desist<br />
From following her beauty with my verse,<br />
As every artist at his uttermost.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Such as I leave her to a greater fame<br />
Than any of my trumpet, which is bringing<br />
Its arduous matter to a final close,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With voice and gesture of a perfect leader<br />
She recommenced: “We from the greatest body<br />
Have issued to the heaven that is pure light;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Light intellectual replete with love,<br />
Love of true good replete with ecstasy,<br />
Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here shalt thou see the one host and the other<br />
Of Paradise, and one in the same aspects<br />
Which at the final judgment thou shalt see.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as a sudden lightning that disperses<br />
The visual spirits, so that it deprives<br />
The eye of impress from the strongest objects,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus round about me flashed a living light,<br />
And left me swathed around with such a veil<br />
Of its effulgence, that I nothing saw.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Ever the Love which quieteth this heaven<br />
Welcomes into itself with such salute,<br />
To make the candle ready for its flame.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
No sooner had within me these brief words<br />
An entrance found, than I perceived myself<br />
To be uplifted over my own power,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I with vision new rekindled me,<br />
Such that no light whatever is so pure<br />
But that mine eyes were fortified against it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And light I saw in fashion of a river<br />
Fulvid with its effulgence, ’twixt two banks<br />
Depicted with an admirable Spring.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Out of this river issued living sparks,<br />
And on all sides sank down into the flowers,<br />
Like unto rubies that are set in gold;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And then, as if inebriate with the odours,<br />
They plunged again into the wondrous torrent,<br />
And as one entered issued forth another.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“The high desire, that now inflames and moves thee<br />
To have intelligence of what thou seest,<br />
Pleaseth me all the more, the more it swells.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But of this water it behoves thee drink<br />
Before so great a thirst in thee be slaked.”<br />
Thus said to me the sunshine of mine eyes;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And added: “The river and the topazes<br />
Going in and out, and the laughing of the herbage,<br />
Are of their truth foreshadowing prefaces;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not that these things are difficult in themselves,<br />
But the deficiency is on thy side,<br />
For yet thou hast not vision so exalted.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There is no babe that leaps so suddenly<br />
With face towards the milk, if he awake<br />
Much later than his usual custom is,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As I did, that I might make better mirrors<br />
Still of mine eyes, down stooping to the wave<br />
Which flows that we therein be better made.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids<br />
Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me<br />
Out of its length to be transformed to round.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then as a folk who have been under masks<br />
Seem other than before, if they divest<br />
The semblance not their own they disappeared in,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus into greater pomp were changed for me<br />
The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw<br />
Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O splendour of God! by means of which I saw<br />
The lofty triumph of the realm veracious,<br />
Give me the power to say how it I saw!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There is a light above, which visible<br />
Makes the Creator unto every creature,<br />
Who only in beholding Him has peace,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And it expands itself in circular form<br />
To such extent, that its circumference<br />
Would be too large a girdle for the sun.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The semblance of it is all made of rays<br />
Reflected from the top of Primal Motion,<br />
Which takes therefrom vitality and power.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as a hill in water at its base<br />
Mirrors itself, as if to see its beauty<br />
When affluent most in verdure and in flowers,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So, ranged aloft all round about the light,<br />
Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand<br />
All who above there have from us returned.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if the lowest row collect within it<br />
So great a light, how vast the amplitude<br />
Is of this Rose in its extremest leaves!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My vision in the vastness and the height<br />
Lost not itself, but comprehended all<br />
The quantity and quality of that gladness.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
There near and far nor add nor take away;<br />
For there where God immediately doth govern,<br />
The natural law in naught is relevant.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal<br />
That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odour<br />
Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As one who silent is and fain would speak,<br />
Me Beatrice drew on, and said: “Behold<br />
Of the white stoles how vast the convent is!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Behold how vast the circuit of our city!<br />
Behold our seats so filled to overflowing,<br />
That here henceforward are few people wanting!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On that great throne whereon thine eyes are fixed<br />
For the crown’s sake already placed upon it,<br />
Before thou suppest at this wedding feast
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus<br />
On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come<br />
To redress Italy ere she be ready.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Blind covetousness, that casts its spell upon you,<br />
Has made you like unto the little child,<br />
Who dies of hunger and drives off the nurse.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And in the sacred forum then shall be<br />
A Prefect such, that openly or covert<br />
On the same road he will not walk with him.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But long of God he will not be endured<br />
In holy office; he shall be thrust down<br />
Where Simon Magus is for his deserts,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And make him of Alagna lower go!”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXXI"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXXI</h2>
<p class="noindent">
In fashion then as of a snow-white rose<br />
Displayed itself to me the saintly host,<br />
Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But the other host, that flying sees and sings<br />
The glory of Him who doth enamour it,<br />
And the goodness that created it so noble,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as a swarm of bees, that sinks in flowers<br />
One moment, and the next returns again<br />
To where its labour is to sweetness turned,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Sank into the great flower, that is adorned<br />
With leaves so many, and thence reascended<br />
To where its love abideth evermore.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Their faces had they all of living flame,<br />
And wings of gold, and all the rest so white<br />
No snow unto that limit doth attain.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From bench to bench, into the flower descending,<br />
They carried something of the peace and ardour<br />
Which by the fanning of their flanks they won.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Nor did the interposing ’twixt the flower<br />
And what was o’er it of such plenitude<br />
Of flying shapes impede the sight and splendour;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because the light divine so penetrates<br />
The universe, according to its merit,<br />
That naught can be an obstacle against it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
This realm secure and full of gladsomeness,<br />
Crowded with ancient people and with modern,<br />
Unto one mark had all its look and love.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O Trinal Light, that in a single star<br />
Sparkling upon their sight so satisfies them,<br />
Look down upon our tempest here below!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
If the barbarians, coming from some region<br />
That every day by Helice is covered,<br />
Revolving with her son whom she delights in,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Beholding Rome and all her noble works,<br />
Were wonder-struck, what time the Lateran<br />
Above all mortal things was eminent,—
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I who to the divine had from the human,<br />
From time unto eternity, had come,<br />
From Florence to a people just and sane,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
With what amazement must I have been filled!<br />
Truly between this and the joy, it was<br />
My pleasure not to hear, and to be mute.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as a pilgrim who delighteth him<br />
In gazing round the temple of his vow,<br />
And hopes some day to retell how it was,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So through the living light my way pursuing<br />
Directed I mine eyes o’er all the ranks,<br />
Now up, now down, and now all round about.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Faces I saw of charity persuasive,<br />
Embellished by His light and their own smile,<br />
And attitudes adorned with every grace.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The general form of Paradise already<br />
My glance had comprehended as a whole,<br />
In no part hitherto remaining fixed,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And round I turned me with rekindled wish<br />
My Lady to interrogate of things<br />
Concerning which my mind was in suspense.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One thing I meant, another answered me;<br />
I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw<br />
An Old Man habited like the glorious people.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O’erflowing was he in his eyes and cheeks<br />
With joy benign, in attitude of pity<br />
As to a tender father is becoming.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And “She, where is she?” instantly I said;<br />
Whence he: “To put an end to thy desire,<br />
Me Beatrice hath sent from mine own place.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if thou lookest up to the third round<br />
Of the first rank, again shalt thou behold her<br />
Upon the throne her merits have assigned her.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Without reply I lifted up mine eyes,<br />
And saw her, as she made herself a crown<br />
Reflecting from herself the eternal rays.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not from that region which the highest thunders<br />
Is any mortal eye so far removed,<br />
In whatsoever sea it deepest sinks,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As there from Beatrice my sight; but this<br />
Was nothing unto me; because her image<br />
Descended not to me by medium blurred.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O Lady, thou in whom my hope is strong,<br />
And who for my salvation didst endure<br />
In Hell to leave the imprint of thy feet,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Of whatsoever things I have beheld,<br />
As coming from thy power and from thy goodness<br />
I recognise the virtue and the grace.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom,<br />
By all those ways, by all the expedients,<br />
Whereby thou hadst the power of doing it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Preserve towards me thy magnificence,<br />
So that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed,<br />
Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus I implored; and she, so far away,<br />
Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me;<br />
Then unto the eternal fountain turned.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And said the Old Man holy: “That thou mayst<br />
Accomplish perfectly thy journeying,<br />
Whereunto prayer and holy love have sent me,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Fly with thine eyes all round about this garden;<br />
For seeing it will discipline thy sight<br />
Farther to mount along the ray divine.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And she, the Queen of Heaven, for whom I burn<br />
Wholly with love, will grant us every grace,<br />
Because that I her faithful Bernard am.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As he who peradventure from Croatia<br />
Cometh to gaze at our Veronica,<br />
Who through its ancient fame is never sated,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But says in thought, the while it is displayed,<br />
“My Lord, Christ Jesus, God of very God,<br />
Now was your semblance made like unto this?”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even such was I while gazing at the living<br />
Charity of the man, who in this world<br />
By contemplation tasted of that peace.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“Thou son of grace, this jocund life,” began he,<br />
“Will not be known to thee by keeping ever<br />
Thine eyes below here on the lowest place;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But mark the circles to the most remote,<br />
Until thou shalt behold enthroned the Queen<br />
To whom this realm is subject and devoted.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I lifted up mine eyes, and as at morn<br />
The oriental part of the horizon<br />
Surpasses that wherein the sun goes down,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus, as if going with mine eyes from vale<br />
To mount, I saw a part in the remoteness<br />
Surpass in splendour all the other front.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And even as there where we await the pole<br />
That Phaeton drove badly, blazes more<br />
The light, and is on either side diminished,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So likewise that pacific oriflamme<br />
Gleamed brightest in the centre, and each side<br />
In equal measure did the flame abate.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And at that centre, with their wings expanded,<br />
More than a thousand jubilant Angels saw I,<br />
Each differing in effulgence and in kind.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I saw there at their sports and at their songs<br />
A beauty smiling, which the gladness was<br />
Within the eyes of all the other saints;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And if I had in speaking as much wealth<br />
As in imagining, I should not dare<br />
To attempt the smallest part of its delight.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Bernard, as soon as he beheld mine eyes<br />
Fixed and intent upon its fervid fervour,<br />
His own with such affection turned to her
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That it made mine more ardent to behold.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXXII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXXII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
Absorbed in his delight, that contemplator<br />
Assumed the willing office of a teacher,<br />
And gave beginning to these holy words:
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“The wound that Mary closed up and anointed,<br />
She at her feet who is so beautiful,<br />
She is the one who opened it and pierced it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within that order which the third seats make<br />
Is seated Rachel, lower than the other,<br />
With Beatrice, in manner as thou seest.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and her who was<br />
Ancestress of the Singer, who for dole<br />
Of the misdeed said, ‘Miserere mei,’
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Canst thou behold from seat to seat descending<br />
Down in gradation, as with each one’s name<br />
I through the Rose go down from leaf to leaf.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And downward from the seventh row, even as<br />
Above the same, succeed the Hebrew women,<br />
Dividing all the tresses of the flower;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because, according to the view which Faith<br />
In Christ had taken, these are the partition<br />
By which the sacred stairways are divided.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Upon this side, where perfect is the flower<br />
With each one of its petals, seated are<br />
Those who believed in Christ who was to come.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Upon the other side, where intersected<br />
With vacant spaces are the semicircles,<br />
Are those who looked to Christ already come.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And as, upon this side, the glorious seat<br />
Of the Lady of Heaven, and the other seats<br />
Below it, such a great division make,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
So opposite doth that of the great John,<br />
Who, ever holy, desert and martyrdom<br />
Endured, and afterwards two years in Hell.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And under him thus to divide were chosen<br />
Francis, and Benedict, and Augustine,<br />
And down to us the rest from round to round.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Behold now the high providence divine;<br />
For one and other aspect of the Faith<br />
In equal measure shall this garden fill.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And know that downward from that rank which cleaves<br />
Midway the sequence of the two divisions,<br />
Not by their proper merit are they seated;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But by another’s under fixed conditions;<br />
For these are spirits one and all assoiled<br />
Before they any true election had.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Well canst thou recognise it in their faces,<br />
And also in their voices puerile,<br />
If thou regard them well and hearken to them.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now doubtest thou, and doubting thou art silent;<br />
But I will loosen for thee the strong bond<br />
In which thy subtile fancies hold thee fast.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within the amplitude of this domain<br />
No casual point can possibly find place,<br />
No more than sadness can, or thirst, or hunger;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For by eternal law has been established<br />
Whatever thou beholdest, so that closely<br />
The ring is fitted to the finger here.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And therefore are these people, festinate<br />
Unto true life, not ‘sine causa’ here<br />
More and less excellent among themselves.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The King, by means of whom this realm reposes<br />
In so great love and in so great delight<br />
That no will ventureth to ask for more,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In his own joyous aspect every mind<br />
Creating, at his pleasure dowers with grace<br />
Diversely; and let here the effect suffice.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And this is clearly and expressly noted<br />
For you in Holy Scripture, in those twins<br />
Who in their mother had their anger roused.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
According to the colour of the hair,<br />
Therefore, with such a grace the light supreme<br />
Consenteth that they worthily be crowned.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Without, then, any merit of their deeds,<br />
Stationed are they in different gradations,<br />
Differing only in their first acuteness.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
’Tis true that in the early centuries,<br />
With innocence, to work out their salvation<br />
Sufficient was the faith of parents only.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
After the earlier ages were completed,<br />
Behoved it that the males by circumcision<br />
Unto their innocent wings should virtue add;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But after that the time of grace had come<br />
Without the baptism absolute of Christ,<br />
Such innocence below there was retained.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Look now into the face that unto Christ<br />
Hath most resemblance; for its brightness only<br />
Is able to prepare thee to see Christ.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
On her did I behold so great a gladness<br />
Rain down, borne onward in the holy minds<br />
Created through that altitude to fly,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That whatsoever I had seen before<br />
Did not suspend me in such admiration,<br />
Nor show me such similitude of God.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And the same Love that first descended there,<br />
“Ave Maria, gratia plena,” singing,<br />
In front of her his wings expanded wide.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Unto the canticle divine responded<br />
From every part the court beatified,<br />
So that each sight became serener for it.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
“O holy father, who for me endurest<br />
To be below here, leaving the sweet place<br />
In which thou sittest by eternal lot,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Who is the Angel that with so much joy<br />
Into the eyes is looking of our Queen,<br />
Enamoured so that he seems made of fire?”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thus I again recourse had to the teaching<br />
Of that one who delighted him in Mary<br />
As doth the star of morning in the sun.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And he to me: “Such gallantry and grace<br />
As there can be in Angel and in soul,<br />
All is in him; and thus we fain would have it;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because he is the one who bore the palm<br />
Down unto Mary, when the Son of God<br />
To take our burden on himself decreed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But now come onward with thine eyes, as I<br />
Speaking shall go, and note the great patricians<br />
Of this most just and merciful of empires.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Those two that sit above there most enrapture<br />
As being very near unto Augusta,<br />
Are as it were the two roots of this Rose.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
He who upon the left is near her placed<br />
The father is, by whose audacious taste<br />
The human species so much bitter tastes.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Upon the right thou seest that ancient father<br />
Of Holy Church, into whose keeping Christ<br />
The keys committed of this lovely flower.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And he who all the evil days beheld,<br />
Before his death, of her the beauteous bride<br />
Who with the spear and with the nails was won,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Beside him sits, and by the other rests<br />
That leader under whom on manna lived<br />
The people ingrate, fickle, and stiff-necked.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Opposite Peter seest thou Anna seated,<br />
So well content to look upon her daughter,<br />
Her eyes she moves not while she sings Hosanna.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And opposite the eldest household father<br />
Lucia sits, she who thy Lady moved<br />
When to rush downward thou didst bend thy brows.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But since the moments of thy vision fly,<br />
Here will we make full stop, as a good tailor<br />
Who makes the gown according to his cloth,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And unto the first Love will turn our eyes,<br />
That looking upon Him thou penetrate<br />
As far as possible through his effulgence.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Truly, lest peradventure thou recede,<br />
Moving thy wings believing to advance,<br />
By prayer behoves it that grace be obtained;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Grace from that one who has the power to aid thee;<br />
And thou shalt follow me with thy affection<br />
That from my words thy heart turn not aside.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And he began this holy orison.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="CantoIII.XXXIII"></a>Paradiso: Canto XXXIII</h2>
<p class="noindent">
“Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,<br />
Humble and high beyond all other creature,<br />
The limit fixed of the eternal counsel,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Thou art the one who such nobility<br />
To human nature gave, that its Creator<br />
Did not disdain to make himself its creature.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within thy womb rekindled was the love,<br />
By heat of which in the eternal peace<br />
After such wise this flower has germinated.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here unto us thou art a noonday torch<br />
Of charity, and below there among mortals<br />
Thou art the living fountain-head of hope.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Lady, thou art so great, and so prevailing,<br />
That he who wishes grace, nor runs to thee,<br />
His aspirations without wings would fly.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not only thy benignity gives succour<br />
To him who asketh it, but oftentimes<br />
Forerunneth of its own accord the asking.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In thee compassion is, in thee is pity,<br />
In thee magnificence; in thee unites<br />
Whate’er of goodness is in any creature.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Now doth this man, who from the lowest depth<br />
Of the universe as far as here has seen<br />
One after one the spiritual lives,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Supplicate thee through grace for so much power<br />
That with his eyes he may uplift himself<br />
Higher towards the uttermost salvation.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I, who never burned for my own seeing<br />
More than I do for his, all of my prayers<br />
Proffer to thee, and pray they come not short,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That thou wouldst scatter from him every cloud<br />
Of his mortality so with thy prayers,<br />
That the Chief Pleasure be to him displayed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Still farther do I pray thee, Queen, who canst<br />
Whate’er thou wilt, that sound thou mayst preserve<br />
After so great a vision his affections.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Let thy protection conquer human movements;<br />
See Beatrice and all the blessed ones<br />
My prayers to second clasp their hands to thee!”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The eyes beloved and revered of God,<br />
Fastened upon the speaker, showed to us<br />
How grateful unto her are prayers devout;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Then unto the Eternal Light they turned,<br />
On which it is not credible could be<br />
By any creature bent an eye so clear.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I, who to the end of all desires<br />
Was now approaching, even as I ought<br />
The ardour of desire within me ended.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Bernard was beckoning unto me, and smiling,<br />
That I should upward look; but I already<br />
Was of my own accord such as he wished;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because my sight, becoming purified,<br />
Was entering more and more into the ray<br />
Of the High Light which of itself is true.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
From that time forward what I saw was greater<br />
Than our discourse, that to such vision yields,<br />
And yields the memory unto such excess.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even as he is who seeth in a dream,<br />
And after dreaming the imprinted passion<br />
Remains, and to his mind the rest returns not,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even such am I, for almost utterly<br />
Ceases my vision, and distilleth yet<br />
Within my heart the sweetness born of it;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even thus the snow is in the sun unsealed,<br />
Even thus upon the wind in the light leaves<br />
Were the soothsayings of the Sibyl lost.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O Light Supreme, that dost so far uplift thee<br />
From the conceits of mortals, to my mind<br />
Of what thou didst appear re-lend a little,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And make my tongue of so great puissance,<br />
That but a single sparkle of thy glory<br />
It may bequeath unto the future people;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
For by returning to my memory somewhat,<br />
And by a little sounding in these verses,<br />
More of thy victory shall be conceived!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I think the keenness of the living ray<br />
Which I endured would have bewildered me,<br />
If but mine eyes had been averted from it;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And I remember that I was more bold<br />
On this account to bear, so that I joined<br />
My aspect with the Glory Infinite.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O grace abundant, by which I presumed<br />
To fix my sight upon the Light Eternal,<br />
So that the seeing I consumed therein!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
I saw that in its depth far down is lying<br />
Bound up with love together in one volume,<br />
What through the universe in leaves is scattered;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Substance, and accident, and their operations,<br />
All interfused together in such wise<br />
That what I speak of is one simple light.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The universal fashion of this knot<br />
Methinks I saw, since more abundantly<br />
In saying this I feel that I rejoice.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
One moment is more lethargy to me,<br />
Than five and twenty centuries to the emprise<br />
That startled Neptune with the shade of Argo!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
My mind in this wise wholly in suspense,<br />
Steadfast, immovable, attentive gazed,<br />
And evermore with gazing grew enkindled.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
In presence of that light one such becomes,<br />
That to withdraw therefrom for other prospect<br />
It is impossible he e’er consent;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Because the good, which object is of will,<br />
Is gathered all in this, and out of it<br />
That is defective which is perfect there.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Shorter henceforward will my language fall<br />
Of what I yet remember, than an infant’s<br />
Who still his tongue doth moisten at the breast.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Not because more than one unmingled semblance<br />
Was in the living light on which I looked,<br />
For it is always what it was before;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But through the sight, that fortified itself<br />
In me by looking, one appearance only<br />
To me was ever changing as I changed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within the deep and luminous subsistence<br />
Of the High Light appeared to me three circles,<br />
Of threefold colour and of one dimension,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
And by the second seemed the first reflected<br />
As Iris is by Iris, and the third<br />
Seemed fire that equally from both is breathed.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O how all speech is feeble and falls short<br />
Of my conceit, and this to what I saw<br />
Is such, ’tis not enough to call it little!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest,<br />
Sole knowest thyself, and, known unto thyself<br />
And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself!
</p>
<p class="noindent">
That circulation, which being thus conceived<br />
Appeared in thee as a reflected light,<br />
When somewhat contemplated by mine eyes,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Within itself, of its own very colour<br />
Seemed to me painted with our effigy,<br />
Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
As the geometrician, who endeavours<br />
To square the circle, and discovers not,<br />
By taking thought, the principle he wants,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Even such was I at that new apparition;<br />
I wished to see how the image to the circle<br />
Conformed itself, and how it there finds place;
</p>
<p class="noindent">
But my own wings were not enough for this,<br />
Had it not been that then my mind there smote<br />
A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish.
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:<br />
But now was turning my desire and will,<br />
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="appendix"></a>APPENDIX</h2>
<p class="noindent">
SIX SONNETS ON DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW<br />
(1807-1882)
</p>
<h3>I</h3>
<p class="noindent">
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door<br />
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,<br />
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet<br />
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor<br />
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er;<br />
Far off the noises of the world retreat;<br />
The loud vociferations of the street<br />
Become an undistinguishable roar.<br />
So, as I enter here from day to day,<br />
And leave my burden at this minster gate,<br />
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,<br />
The tumult of the time disconsolate<br />
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,<br />
While the eternal ages watch and wait.
</p>
<h3>II</h3>
<p class="noindent">
How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!<br />
This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves<br />
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves<br />
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,<br />
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!<br />
But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves<br />
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,<br />
And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!<br />
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,<br />
What exultations trampling on despair,<br />
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,<br />
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,<br />
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,<br />
This mediaeval miracle of song!
</p>
<h3>III</h3>
<p class="noindent">
I enter, and I see thee in the gloom<br />
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!<br />
And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.<br />
The air is filled with some unknown perfume;<br />
The congregation of the dead make room<br />
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;<br />
Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine,<br />
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.<br />
From the confessionals I hear arise<br />
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,<br />
And lamentations from the crypts below<br />
And then a voice celestial that begins<br />
With the pathetic words, “Although your sins<br />
As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.”
</p>
<h3>IV</h3>
<p class="noindent">
With snow-white veil, and garments as of flame,<br />
She stands before thee, who so long ago<br />
Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe<br />
From which thy song in all its splendors came;<br />
And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,<br />
The ice about thy heart melts as the snow<br />
On mountain heights, and in swift overflow<br />
Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.<br />
Thou makest full confession; and a gleam<br />
As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,<br />
Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;<br />
Lethe and Eunoe—the remembered dream<br />
And the forgotten sorrow—bring at last<br />
That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.
</p>
<h3>V</h3>
<p class="noindent">
I Lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze<br />
With forms of saints and holy men who died,<br />
Here martyred and hereafter glorified;<br />
And the great Rose upon its leaves displays<br />
Christ’s Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,<br />
With splendor upon splendor multiplied;<br />
And Beatrice again at Dante’s side<br />
No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.<br />
And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs<br />
Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love<br />
And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;<br />
And the melodious bells among the spires<br />
O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above<br />
Proclaim the elevation of the Host!
</p>
<h3>VI</h3>
<p class="noindent">
O star of morning and of liberty!<br />
O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines<br />
Above the darkness of the Apennines,<br />
Forerunner of the day that is to be!<br />
The voices of the city and the sea,<br />
The voices of the mountains and the pines,<br />
Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines<br />
Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!<br />
Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights,<br />
Through all the nations; and a sound is heard,<br />
As of a mighty wind, and men devout,<br />
Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,<br />
In their own language hear thy wondrous word,<br />
And many are amazed and many doubt.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1003 ***</div>
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