Part 162

Thereafterward a light among them brightened, So that, if Cancer one such crystal had, Winter would have a month of one sole day.

And as uprises, goes, and enters the dance A winsome maiden, only to do honour To the new bride, and not from any failing,

Even thus did I behold the brightened splendour Approach the two, who in a wheel revolved As was beseeming to their ardent love.

Into the song and music there it entered; And fixed on them my Lady kept her look, Even as a bride silent and motionless.

“This is the one who lay upon the breast Of him our Pelican; and this is he To the great office from the cross elected.”

My Lady thus; but therefore none the more Did move her sight from its attentive gaze Before or afterward these words of hers.

Even as a man who gazes, and endeavours To see the eclipsing of the sun a little, And who, by seeing, sightless doth become,

So I became before that latest fire, While it was said, “Why dost thou daze thyself To see a thing which here hath no existence?

Earth in the earth my body is, and shall be With all the others there, until our number With the eternal proposition tallies.

With the two garments in the blessed cloister Are the two lights alone that have ascended: And this shalt thou take back into your world.”

And at this utterance the flaming circle Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling Of sound that by the trinal breath was made,

As to escape from danger or fatigue The oars that erst were in the water beaten Are all suspended at a whistle’s sound.

Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed, When I turned round to look on Beatrice, That her I could not see, although I was

Close at her side and in the Happy World!

Paradiso: Canto XXVI

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, ’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 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.

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, 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, 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;

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 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.