Part 71

He who sits highest, and the semblance bears Of having what he should have done neglected, And to the others’ song moves not his lips,

Rudolph the Emperor was, who had the power To heal the wounds that Italy have slain, So that through others slowly she revives.

The other, who in look doth comfort him, Governed the region where the water springs, The Moldau bears the Elbe, and Elbe the sea.

His name was Ottocar; and in swaddling-clothes Far better he than bearded Winceslaus His son, who feeds in luxury and ease.

And the small-nosed, who close in council seems With him that has an aspect so benign, Died fleeing and disflowering the lily;

Look there, how he is beating at his breast! Behold the other one, who for his cheek Sighing has made of his own palm a bed;

Father and father-in-law of France’s Pest Are they, and know his vicious life and lewd, And hence proceeds the grief that so doth pierce them.

He who appears so stalwart, and chimes in, Singing, with that one of the manly nose, The cord of every valour wore begirt;

And if as King had after him remained The stripling who in rear of him is sitting, Well had the valour passed from vase to vase,

Which cannot of the other heirs be said. Frederick and Jacomo possess the realms, But none the better heritage possesses.

Not oftentimes upriseth through the branches The probity of man; and this He wills Who gives it, so that we may ask of Him.

Eke to the large-nosed reach my words, no less Than to the other, Pier, who with him sings; Whence Provence and Apulia grieve already

The plant is as inferior to its seed, As more than Beatrice and Margaret Costanza boasteth of her husband still.

Behold the monarch of the simple life, Harry of England, sitting there alone; He in his branches has a better issue.

He who the lowest on the ground among them Sits looking upward, is the Marquis William, For whose sake Alessandria and her war

Make Monferrat and Canavese weep.”

Purgatorio: Canto VIII

’Twas now the hour that turneth back desire In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart, The day they’ve said to their sweet friends farewell,

And the new pilgrim penetrates with love, If he doth hear from far away a bell That seemeth to deplore the dying day,

When I began to make of no avail My hearing, and to watch one of the souls Uprisen, that begged attention with its hand.

It joined and lifted upward both its palms, Fixing its eyes upon the orient, As if it said to God, “Naught else I care for.”

“Te lucis ante” so devoutly issued Forth from its mouth, and with such dulcet notes, It made me issue forth from my own mind.

And then the others, sweetly and devoutly, Accompanied it through all the hymn entire, Having their eyes on the supernal wheels.

Here, Reader, fix thine eyes well on the truth, For now indeed so subtile is the veil, Surely to penetrate within is easy.

I saw that army of the gentle-born Thereafterward in silence upward gaze, As if in expectation, pale and humble;

And from on high come forth and down descend, I saw two Angels with two flaming swords, Truncated and deprived of their points.

Green as the little leaflets just now born Their garments were, which, by their verdant pinions Beaten and blown abroad, they trailed behind.

One just above us came to take his station, And one descended to the opposite bank, So that the people were contained between them.