While I was doubting for my vision quenched,
Out of the flame refulgent that had quenched it
Issued a breathing, that attentive made me,
Saying: "While thou recoverest the sense
Of seeing which in me thou hast consumed, 5
'Tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it.
Begin then, and declare to what thy soul
Is aimed, and count it for a certainty,
Sight is in thee bewildered and not dead;
Because the Lady, who through this divine 10
Region conducteth thee, has in her look
The power the hand of Ananias had."
I said: "As pleaseth her, or soon or late
Let the cure come to eyes that portals were
When she with fire I ever burn with entered. 15
The Good, that gives contentment to this Court,
The Alpha and Omega is of all
The writing that love reads me low or loud."
The selfsame voice, that taken had from me
The terror of the sudden dazzlement, 20
To speak still farther put it in my thought;
And said: "In verity with finer sieve
Behoveth thee to sift; thee it behoveth
To say who aimed thy bow at such a target."
And I: "By philosophic arguments, 25
And by authority that hence descends,
Such love must needs imprint itself in me;
For Good, so far as good, when comprehended
Doth straight enkindle love, and so much greater
As more of goodness in itself it holds; 30
Then to that Essence (whose is such advantage
That every good which out of it is found
Is nothing but a ray of its own light)
More than elsewhither must the mind be moved
Of every one, in loving, who discerns 35
The truth in which this evidence is founded.
Such truth he to my intellect reveals
Who demonstrates to me the primal love
Of all the sempiternal substances.
The voice reveals it of the truthful Author, 40
Who says to Moses, speaking of Himself,
'I will make all my goodness pass before thee.'
Thou too revealest it to me, beginning
The loud Evangel, that proclaims the secret
Of heaven to earth above all other edict." 45
And I heard say: "By human intellect
And by authority concordant with it,
Of all thy loves reserve for God the highest.
But say again if other cords thou feelest,
Draw thee towards Him, that thou mayst proclaim 50
With how many teeth this love is biting thee."
The holy purpose of the Eagle of Christ
Not latent was, nay, rather I perceived
Whither he fain would my profession lead.
Therefore I recommenced: "All of those bites 55
Which have the power to turn the heart to God
Unto my charity have been concurrent.
The being of the world, and my own being,
The death which He endured that I may live,
And that which all the faithful hope, as I do, 60
With the forementioned vivid consciousness
Have drawn me from the sea of love perverse,
And of the right have placed me on the shore.
The leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden
Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love 65
As much as he has granted them of good."
As soon as I had ceased, a song most sweet
Throughout the heaven resounded, and my Lady
Said with the others, "Holy, holy, holy!"
And as at some keen light one wakes from sleep 70
By reason of the visual spirit that runs
Unto the splendour passed from coat to coat,
And he who wakes abhorreth what he sees,
So all unconscious is his sudden waking,
Until the judgment cometh to his aid, 75
So from before mine eyes did Beatrice
Chase every mote with radiance of her own,
That cast its light a thousand miles and more.
Whence better after than before I saw,
And in a kind of wonderment I asked 80
About a fourth light that I saw with us.
And said my Lady: "There within those rays
Gazes upon its Maker the first soul
That ever the first virtue did create."
Even as the bough that downward bends its top 85
At transit of the wind, and then is lifted
By its own virtue, which inclines it upward,
Likewise did I, the while that she was speaking,
Being amazed, and then I was made bold
By a desire to speak wherewith I burned. 90
And I began: "O apple, that mature
Alone hast been produced, O ancient father,
To whom each wife is daughter and daughter-in-law,
Devoutly as I can I supplicate thee
That thou wouldst speak to me; thou seest my wish; 95
And I, to hear thee quickly, speak it not."
Sometimes an animal, when covered, struggles
So that his impulse needs must be apparent,
By reason of the wrappage following it;
And in like manner the primeval soul 100
Made clear to me athwart its covering
How jubilant it was to give me pleasure.
Then breathed: "Without thy uttering it to me,
Thine inclination better I discern
Than thou whatever thing is surest to thee; 105
For I behold it in the truthful mirror,
That of Himself all things parhelion makes,
And none makes Him parhelion of itself.
Thou fain wouldst hear how long ago God placed me
Within the lofty garden, where this Lady 110
Unto so long a stairway thee disposed.
And how long to mine eyes it was a pleasure,
And of the great disdain the proper cause,
And the language that I used and that I made.
Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree 115
Not in itself was cause of so great exile,
But solely the o'erstepping of the bounds.
There, whence thy Lady moved Virgilius,
Four thousand and three hundred and two circuits
Made by the sun, this Council I desired; 120
And him I saw return to all the lights
Of his highway nine hundred times and thirty,
Whilst I upon the earth was tarrying.
The language that I spake was quite extinct
Before that in the work interminable 125
The people under Nimrod were employed;
For nevermore result of reasoning
(Because of human pleasure that doth change,
Obedient to the heavens) was durable.
A natural action is it that man speaks; 130
But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave
To your own art, as seemeth best to you.
Ere I descended to the infernal anguish,
'El' was on earth the name of the Chief Good,
From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round 135
'Eli' he then was called, and that is proper,
Because the use of men is like a leaf
On bough, which goeth and another cometh.
Upon the mount that highest o'er the wave
Rises was I, in life or pure or sinful, 140
From the first hour to that which is the second,
As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth."
NOTES
1 - 1
The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. St. John examines Dante on Charity, in the sense of Love, as in Milton, Par. Lost, XII, 583: –
“Love,
By name to come called Charity.”
12 - 12
Ananias, the disciple at Damascus, whose touch restored the sight of Saul. Acts, ix, 17: “And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house, and putting his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales; and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.”
17 - 17
God is the beginning and end of all my love.
38 - 38
The commentators differ as to which of the philosophers Dante here refers; whether to Aristotle, Plato, or Pythagoras.
39 - 39
The angels.
42 - 42
Exodus, xxxiii, 19: “And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee.”
44 - 44
John, i, I: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,... full of grace and truth.”
46 - 46
By all the dictates of human reason and divine authority.
52 - 52
In Christian art the eagle is the symbol of St. John, indicating his more fervid imagination and deeper insight into divine mysteries. Sometimes even the saint was represented with the head and feet of an eagle, and the hands and body of a man.
64 - 64
All living creatures.
69 - 69
Isaiah, vi, 3: “As one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
83 - 83
The soul of Adam.
91 - 91
“Tell me, of what age was Adam when he was created”? is one of the questions in the Anglo-Saxon Dialogue between Saturn and Solomon; and the answer is, “I tell thee, he was thirty winters old.” And Buti says: “He was created of the age of thirty-three, or thereabout; and therefore the author says that Adam alone was created by God in perfect age and stature, and no other man.” And Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 39: “Some divines count Adam thirty years old at his creation, because they suppose him created in the perfect age and stature of man.”
Stehelin, Traditions of the Jews, I, 16, quotes Rabbi Eliezer as saying “that the first man reached from the earth to the firmament of heaven; but that, after he had sinned, God laid his hands on him and reduced him to a less size.” And Rabbi Salomon writes, that “when he lay down, his head was in the east and his feet in the west.”
107 - 108
Parhelion is an imperfect image of the sun, formed by reflection in the clouds. All things are such faint reflections of the Creator; but he is the reflection of none of them.
Buti interprets the passage differently, giving to the word pareglio the meaning of ricettacolo, receptacle.
118 - 118
In Limbo, longing for Paradise, where the only punishment is to live in desire, but without hope. Inf., IV, 41: –
“Lost are we, and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire.”
124 - 124
Most of the Oriental languages claim the honor of being the language spoken by Adam in Paradise. Juan Bautista de Erro claims it for the Basque, or Vascongada. See Alphabet of Prim. lang. of Spain, Pt. II, Ch. 2, Erving's Tr.
129 - 129
See Canto XVI, 79: –
“All things of yours have their mortality,
Even as yourselves.”
134 - 136
Dante, De Volg. Eloq., I, Ch. 4, says, speaking of Adam: “What was the first word he spake will, I doubt not, readily suggest itself to every one of sound mind as being what God is, namely, El, either in the way of question or of answer.” – The word used by Matthew, xxvii, 46, is Eli, and by Mark, xv. 34, Eloi, which Dante assumes to be of later use than El. There is, I believe, no authority for this. El is God; Eli, or Eloi, my God.
137 - 137
Horace, Ars Poet., 60: “As the woods change their leaves in autumn, and the earliest fall, so the ancient words pass away, and the new flourish in the freshness of youth... Many that now have fallen shall spring up again, and others fall which now are held in honor, if usage wills, which is the judge, the law, and the rule of language.”
139 - 139
The mount of Purgatory, on whose summit was the Terrestrial Paradise.
142 - 142
The sixth hour is noon in the old way of reckoning; and at noon the sun has completed one quarter or quadrant of the arc of his revolution, and changes to the next. The hour which is second to the sixth, is the hour which follows it, or one o'clock. This gives seven hours for Adam's stay in Paradise; and so says Peter Comestor (Dante's Peter Mangiador) in his ecclesiastical history.
The Talmud, as quoted by Stehelin, Tradition of the Jews, I, 20, gives the following account: “The day has twelve hours. In the first hour the dust of which Adam was formed was brought together. In the second, this dust was made a rude, unshapely mass. In the third, the limbs were stretched out. In the fourth, a soul was lodged in it. In the fifth, Adam stood upon his feet. In the sixth, he assigned the names of all things that were created. In the seventh, he received Eve for his consort. In the eighth, two went to bed and four rose out of it; the begetting and birth of two children in that time, namely, Cain and his sister. In the ninth, he was forbid to eat of the fruit of the tree. In the tenth, he disobeyed. In the eleventh, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced. In the twelfth, he was banished, or driven out of the garden.”