Dante's Paradiso: Canto XX
The Eagle praises the Righteous Kings of old. Benevolence of the Divine Will.
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 5
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, 10
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! 15
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, 20
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, 25
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. 30
"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 35
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, 40
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; 45
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, 50
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, 55
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. 60
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 65
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 70
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, 75
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, 80
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 85
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. 90
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 95
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 100
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. 105
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, 110
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 115
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, 120
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, 125
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 130
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; 135
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, 140
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 145
That I beheld both of those blessed lights,
Even as the winking of the eyes concords,
Moving unto the words their little flames.
NOTES
1 - 1
The Heaven of Jupiter continued.
3 - 3
Coleridge, Ancient Mariner: –
The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out;
At one stride comes the dark.“
5 - 5
Blanco White, Night: –
Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay
concealed
Within thy beams, O sun! or who could
find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us
blind?
Why do we,then, shun death with anxious
strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not
Life?”
37 - 37
King David, who carrid the Ark of the Covenant from Kirjathjearim to the house of Obed-Edom, and thence to Jerusalem. See 2 Samuel, vi.
41 - 41
In so far as the Psalms were the result of his own free will, and not of divine inspiration. As in Canto VI, 118:
But in commensuration of our wages
With our desert is portion of our joy,
Because we see them neither less nor
greater.“
44 - 44
The Emperor Trajan, whose soul was saved by the prayers of St. Gregory. For the story of the poor widow, see Purg., X, 73, and note.
49 - 49
King Hezekiah.
51 - 51
2 Kings, xx, 11: ”And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord; and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.“
55 - 55
Constantine, who transferred the seat of empire, the Roman laws, and the Roman standard to Byzantium, thus in a poetic sense becoming a Greek.
56 - 56
This refers to the supposed gift of Constantine to Pope Sylvester, Known in ecclesiastical history as the patrimony of Saint Peter. Inf., XXI, 115: –
”Ah, Constantine! of how much woe was
mother,
Not thy conversion, but that marriagedower
Which the first wealthy Father took from
thee!“
See also the note.
62 - 62
William the Second, surnamed the Good, son of Robert Guiscard, and King of Apulia and Sicily, which Kingdoms were then lamenting the living presence of such kings as Charles the Lame, ”the Cripple of Jerusalem“, king of Apulia, and Frederick of Aragon, king of Sicily.
”King Guilielmo“, says the Ottimo, ”was just and reasonable, loved his subjects, and kept them in such peace, that living in Sicily might then be esteemed living in a terrestrial paradise. He was liberal to all, and proportioned his bounties to the virtue [of the receiver]. And he had this rule, that if a vicious or evil-speaking courtier came to his court, he was immediately noticed by the masters of ceremony, and provided with gifts and robes, so that he might have a cause to depart. If he was wise, he departed; if not, he was politely dismissed.“ The Vicar of Wakefield seems to have followed the example of the good King William, for he says: ”When any one of our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.“
68 - 68
A Trojan hero slain at the sack of Troy. Aeneid, II, 426: ”Ripheus also falls, the most just among the Trojans, and most observant of the right.“
Venturi thinks that, if Dante must needs introduce a Pagan into Paradise, he would have done better to have chosen Aeneas, who was the hero of his master, Virgil, and, moreover, the founder of the Roman empire.
73 - 73
The word ”expatiate“ is here used in the sense given it by Milton in the following passage, Par. Lost, I, 768:
”As bees,
In spring-time when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters; they, among fresh dews and flowers,
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state-affairs.“
Landor, Pentameron, p. 92, says: ”All the verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark. In the first of them, do not you see the twinkling of her wings against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my heart (like hers) contented.“
92 - 92
In scholastic language the quiddity of a thing is its essence, or that by which it is what it is.
94 - 94
Matthew, xi, 12: ”And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.“
100 - 100
Trajan and Ripheus.
105 - 105
Ripheus lived before Christ, and Trajan after.
Shakespeare, King Henry IV, I, 1: –
”In those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed,
For our advantage, on the bitter cross.“
106 - 106
Trajan.
111 - 111
Being in hell, he could not repent; being resuscitated, his inclinations could turn towards good.
112 - 112
The legend of Trajan is, that by the prayers of St. Gregory the Great he was restored to life, after he had been dead four hundred years; that he lived long enough to be baptized, and was then received into Paradise. See Purg., X, Note 73.
118 - 118
Ripheus. ”This is a fiction of our author“, says Buti, ”as the intelligent reader may imagine; for there is no proof that Ripheus the Trojan is saved.“
127 - 127
Faith, Hope, and Charity. Purg., XXIX, 121: –
”Three ladies at the right wheel in a circle
Came onward dancing; one so very red
That in the fire she hardly had been noted
The second was as if her flesh and bones
Had all been fashioned out of emerald;
The third appeared as snow but newly
fallen.“
130 - 130
Romans, ix, 20: ”Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Had not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?“