Paradiso (37 page)
Authors: Dante
‘To the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,
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glory,’ cried all the souls of Paradise,
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and I became drunk on the sweetness of their song.
It seemed to me I saw the universe
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smile, so that my drunkenness
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came now through hearing and through sight.
O happiness! O joy beyond description!
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O life fulfilled in love and peace!
Before my eyes four torches were aflame.
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The one who, luminous, had come forth first
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began to glow more brilliantly,
his aspect changing, as would Jupiter’s
if he and Mars were birds
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and had exchanged their plumage.
The providence that there assigns
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both time and duty had imposed silence
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on every member of the holy choir,
when I heard: ‘If my color changes, do not be amazed,
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for while I am speaking you shall see
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the color of each soul here change as well.
‘He who on earth usurps my place,
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my place, my place, which in the eyes
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of God’s own Son is vacant,
‘has made my tomb a sewer of blood and filth,
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so that the Evil One, who fell from here above,
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takes satisfaction there below.’
Then I saw that all this heaven was suffused
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with the very color painted on those clouds
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that face the sun at dawn or dusk.
As a chaste woman, certain of her virtue,
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merely on hearing of another’s fault,
just so did Beatrice change in her appearance,
and just such an eclipse, I think, there was above
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when the Omnipotent felt pain.
Then he added these words to his first
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with voice so altered from its former state
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that even his looks were not more changed:
‘The Bride of Christ was not nurtured with my blood—
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nor that of Linus and of Cletus—
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to serve the cause of gaining gold.
‘Rather, to gain this joyous way of life
Sixtus, Pius, Calixtus, and Urban
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shed their blood after many tears.
‘It was never our intention that the one part
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of Christ’s fold should be seated on the right
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of our successors, and the other on the left,
‘nor that the keys entrusted to my keeping
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should become devices on the standards
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borne in battles waged against the baptized,
‘nor that I become the imprint in a seal
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on sale for fraudulence and bribes
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so that I blush, in turn, with rage and shame.
‘Ravenous wolves in shepherds’ clothing
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can be seen, from here above, in every pasture.
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O God our defender, why do you not act?
‘Cahorsines and Gascons prepare to drink our blood.
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O lofty promise,
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to what base end are you condemned to fall?
‘But Providence on high, which by the deeds of Scipio
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preserved in Rome the glory of the world,
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shall, as I can clearly see, soon bring assistance.
‘And you, my son, who, for your mortal burden,
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must return below, make sure they hear this
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from your mouth, not hiding what I do not hide.’
As when the sun touches the horn
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of the heavenly Goat and the air
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lets its frozen vapors fall in flakes,
so I saw the celestial sphere adorned
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with triumphant flakes of vapor soaring upward,
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souls who had now been with us for some time.
My eyes were following their forms
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and followed them until the wider intervening space
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made me unable to pursue them higher.
My lady, therefore, who saw that I was freed
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from staring upward, said: ‘Cast your sight below
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and see how wide a circle you have traveled.’
Since the last time I looked down
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I saw I had traversed all of the arc
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from the midpoint of the first clime to its end,
so that on the one side I could see, beyond Gades,
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the mad track of Ulysses, on the other, nearly
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to the shore where Europa made sweet burden of herself.
More space of this small patch of earth
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could I have seen, had not the sun, beneath my feet,
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now moved a sign and more away.
My loving mind, which always lingers lovingly
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on my lady, ardently longed, still more than ever,
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to let my eyes once more be fixed on her.
And if nature or art have fashioned lures
of human flesh, or of paintings done of it,
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to catch the eyes and thus possess the mind,
all these combined would seem as nothing
compared to that divine beauty that shone on me
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when I turned back and saw her smiling face.
And the power that her look bestowed on me
drew me from the fair nest of Leda
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and thrust me into heaven’s swiftest sphere.
Its most rapid and its most exalted parts
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are so alike I cannot tell
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which of them Beatrice chose to set me in.
But she, who knew my wish, began to speak,
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smiling with such gladness that her face
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seemed to express the very joy of God.
‘The nature of the universe, which holds
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the center still and moves all else around it,
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starts here as from its boundary line.
‘This heaven has no other where
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but in the mind of God, in which is kindled
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the love that turns it and the power it pours down.
‘Light and love enclose it in a circle,
as it contains the others. Of that girding
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He that girds it is the sole Intelligence.
‘Its motion is not measured by another’s,
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but from it all the rest receive their measures,
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even as does ten from its half and from its fifth.
‘How time should have its roots in a single flowerpot
and its foliage in all the others
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may now become quite clear to you.
‘O greed, it is you who plunge all mortals
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so deep into your depths that not one has the power
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to lift his eyes above your waves!
‘The will of man bursts into blossom
but the never-ceasing rain reduces
‘Loyalty and innocence are found
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in little children only. Then, before
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their cheeks are bearded, both are fled.
‘One, still babbling, observes the fastdays,
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who later, once his tongue is free,
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devours any kind of food no matter what the month.
‘Another, babbling, loves and heeds his mother,
who later, once his speech has been developed,
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longs to see her buried in her grave.