Part 126

Christians, be ye more serious in your movements; Be ye not like a feather at each wind, And think not every water washes you.

Ye have the Old and the New Testament, And the Pastor of the Church who guideth you Let this suffice you unto your salvation.

If evil appetite cry aught else to you, Be ye as men, and not as silly sheep, So that the Jew among you may not mock you.

Be ye not as the lamb that doth abandon Its mother’s milk, and frolicsome and simple Combats at its own pleasure with itself.”

Thus Beatrice to me even as I write it; Then all desireful turned herself again To that part where the world is most alive.

Her silence and her change of countenance Silence imposed upon my eager mind, That had already in advance new questions;

And as an arrow that upon the mark Strikes ere the bowstring quiet hath become, So did we speed into the second realm.

My Lady there so joyful I beheld, As into the brightness of that heaven she entered, More luminous thereat the planet grew;

And if the star itself was changed and smiled, What became I, who by my nature am Exceeding mutable in every guise!

As, in a fish-pond which is pure and tranquil, The fishes draw to that which from without Comes in such fashion that their food they deem it;

So I beheld more than a thousand splendours Drawing towards us, and in each was heard: “Lo, this is she who shall increase our love.”

And as each one was coming unto us, Full of beatitude the shade was seen, By the effulgence clear that issued from it.

Think, Reader, if what here is just beginning No farther should proceed, how thou wouldst have An agonizing need of knowing more;

And of thyself thou’lt see how I from these Was in desire of hearing their conditions, As they unto mine eyes were manifest.

“O thou well-born, unto whom Grace concedes To see the thrones of the eternal triumph, Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned

With light that through the whole of heaven is spread Kindled are we, and hence if thou desirest To know of us, at thine own pleasure sate thee.”

Thus by some one among those holy spirits Was spoken, and by Beatrice: “Speak, speak Securely, and believe them even as Gods.”

“Well I perceive how thou dost nest thyself In thine own light, and drawest it from thine eyes, Because they coruscate when thou dost smile,

But know not who thou art, nor why thou hast, Spirit august, thy station in the sphere That veils itself to men in alien rays.”

This said I in direction of the light Which first had spoken to me; whence it became By far more lucent than it was before.

Even as the sun, that doth conceal himself By too much light, when heat has worn away The tempering influence of the vapours dense,

By greater rapture thus concealed itself In its own radiance the figure saintly, And thus close, close enfolded answered me

In fashion as the following Canto sings.

Paradiso: Canto VI

“After that Constantine the eagle turned Against the course of heaven, which it had followed Behind the ancient who Lavinia took,

Two hundred years and more the bird of God In the extreme of Europe held itself, Near to the mountains whence it issued first;

And under shadow of the sacred plumes It governed there the world from hand to hand, And, changing thus, upon mine own alighted.

Caesar I was, and am Justinian, Who, by the will of primal Love I feel, Took from the laws the useless and redundant;