Paradise, Canto XX

When he who all the world illuminates

Out of our hemisphere so far descends

That on all sides the daylight is consumed,

The heaven, that erst by him alone was kindled,

Doth suddenly reveal itself again

By many lights, wherein is one resplendent.

And came into my mind this act of heaven,

When the ensign of the world and of its leaders

Had silent in the blessed beak become;

Because those living luminaries all,

By far more luminous, did songs begin

Lapsing and falling from my memory.

O gentle Love, that with a smile dost cloak thee,

How ardent in those sparks didst thou appear,

That had the breath alone of holy thoughts!

After the precious and pellucid crystals,

With which begemmed the sixth light I beheld,

Silence imposed on the angelic bells,

I seemed to hear the murmuring of a river

That clear descendeth down from rock to rock,

Showing the affluence of its mountain-top.

And as the sound upon the cithern's neck

Taketh its form, and as upon the vent

Of rustic pipe the wind that enters it,

Even thus, relieved from the delay of waiting,

That murmuring of the eagle mounted up

Along its neck, as if it had been hollow.

There it became a voice, and issued thence

From out its beak, in such a form of words

As the heart waited for wherein I wrote them.

"The part in me which sees and bears the sun

In mortal eagles," it began to me,

"Now fixedly must needs be looked upon;

For of the fires of which I make my figure,

Those whence the eye doth sparkle in my head

Of all their orders the supremest are.

He who is shining in the midst as pupil

Was once the singer of the Holy Spirit,

Who bore the ark from city unto city;

Now knoweth he the merit of his song,

In so far as effect of his own counsel,

By the reward which is commensurate.

Of five, that make a circle for my brow,

He that approacheth nearest to my beak

Did the poor widow for her son console;

Now knoweth he how dearly it doth cost

Not following Christ, by the experience

Of this sweet life and of its opposite.

He who comes next in the circumference

Of which I speak, upon its highest arc,

Did death postpone by penitence sincere;

Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment

Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer

Maketh below to-morrow of to-day.

The next who follows, with the laws and me,

Under the good intent that bore bad fruit

Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor;

Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced

From his good action is not harmful to him,

Although the world thereby may be destroyed.

And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest,

Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores

That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive;

Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is

With a just king; and in the outward show

Of his effulgence he reveals it still.

Who would believe, down in the errant world,

That e'er the Trojan Ripheus in this round

Could be the fifth one of the holy lights?

Now knoweth he enough of what the world

Has not the power to see of grace divine,

Although his sight may not discern the bottom."

Like as a lark that in the air expatiates,

First singing and then silent with content

Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her,

Such seemed to me the image of the imprint

Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will

Doth everything become the thing it is.

And notwithstanding to my doubt I was

As glass is to the colour that invests it,

To wait the time in silence it endured not,

But forth from out my mouth, "What things are these?"

Extorted with the force of its own weight;

Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation.

Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled

The blessed standard made to me reply,

To keep me not in wonderment suspended:

"I see that thou believest in these things

Because I say them, but thou seest not how;

So that, although believed in, they are hidden.

Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name

Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity

Cannot perceive, unless another show it.

'Regnum coelorum' suffereth violence

From fervent love, and from that living hope

That overcometh the Divine volition;

Not in the guise that man o'ercometh man,

But conquers it because it will be conquered,

And conquered conquers by benignity.

The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth

Cause thee astonishment, because with them

Thou seest the region of the angels painted.

They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest,

Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith

Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered.

For one from Hell, where no one e'er turns back

Unto good will, returned unto his bones,

And that of living hope was the reward,--

Of living hope, that placed its efficacy

In prayers to God made to resuscitate him,

So that 'twere possible to move his will.

The glorious soul concerning which I speak,

Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay,

Believed in Him who had the power to aid it;

And, in believing, kindled to such fire

Of genuine love, that at the second death

Worthy it was to come unto this joy.

The other one, through grace, that from so deep

A fountain wells that never hath the eye

Of any creature reached its primal wave,

Set all his love below on righteousness;

Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose

His eye to our redemption yet to be,

Whence he believed therein, and suffered not

From that day forth the stench of paganism,

And he reproved therefor the folk perverse.

Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel

Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism

More than a thousand years before baptizing.

O thou predestination, how remote

Thy root is from the aspect of all those

Who the First Cause do not behold entire!

And you, O mortals! hold yourselves restrained

In judging; for ourselves, who look on God,

We do not know as yet all the elect;

And sweet to us is such a deprivation,

Because our good in this good is made perfect,

That whatsoe'er God wills, we also will."

After this manner by that shape divine,

To make clear in me my short-sightedness,

Was given to me a pleasant medicine;

And as good singer a good lutanist

Accompanies with vibrations of the chords,

Whereby more pleasantness the song acquires,

So, while it spake, do I remember me

That I beheld both of those blessed lights,

Even as the winking of the eyes concords,

Moving unto the words their little flames.