Part 87

Clearly canst thou perceive that evil guidance The cause is that has made the world depraved, And not that nature is corrupt in you.

Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was Two suns to have, which one road and the other, Of God and of the world, made manifest.

One has the other quenched, and to the crosier The sword is joined, and ill beseemeth it That by main force one with the other go,

Because, being joined, one feareth not the other; If thou believe not, think upon the grain, For by its seed each herb is recognized.

In the land laved by Po and Adige, Valour and courtesy used to be found, Before that Frederick had his controversy;

Now in security can pass that way Whoever will abstain, through sense of shame, From speaking with the good, or drawing near them.

True, three old men are left, in whom upbraids The ancient age the new, and late they deem it That God restore them to the better life:

Currado da Palazzo, and good Gherardo, And Guido da Castel, who better named is, In fashion of the French, the simple Lombard:

Say thou henceforward that the Church of Rome, Confounding in itself two governments, Falls in the mire, and soils itself and burden.”

“O Marco mine,” I said, “thou reasonest well; And now discern I why the sons of Levi Have been excluded from the heritage.

But what Gherardo is it, who, as sample Of a lost race, thou sayest has remained In reprobation of the barbarous age?”

“Either thy speech deceives me, or it tempts me,” He answered me; “for speaking Tuscan to me, It seems of good Gherardo naught thou knowest.

By other surname do I know him not, Unless I take it from his daughter Gaia. May God be with you, for I come no farther.

Behold the dawn, that through the smoke rays out, Already whitening; and I must depart— Yonder the Angel is—ere he appear.”

Thus did he speak, and would no farther hear me.

Purgatorio: Canto XVII

Remember, Reader, if e’er in the Alps A mist o’ertook thee, through which thou couldst see Not otherwise than through its membrane mole,

How, when the vapours humid and condensed Begin to dissipate themselves, the sphere Of the sun feebly enters in among them,

And thy imagination will be swift In coming to perceive how I re-saw The sun at first, that was already setting.

Thus, to the faithful footsteps of my Master Mating mine own, I issued from that cloud To rays already dead on the low shores.

O thou, Imagination, that dost steal us So from without sometimes, that man perceives not, Although around may sound a thousand trumpets,

Who moveth thee, if sense impel thee not? Moves thee a light, which in the heaven takes form, By self, or by a will that downward guides it.

Of her impiety, who changed her form Into the bird that most delights in singing, In my imagining appeared the trace;

And hereupon my mind was so withdrawn Within itself, that from without there came Nothing that then might be received by it.

Then reigned within my lofty fantasy One crucified, disdainful and ferocious In countenance, and even thus was dying.

Around him were the great Ahasuerus, Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai, Who was in word and action so entire.

And even as this image burst asunder Of its own self, in fashion of a bubble In which the water it was made of fails,

There rose up in my vision a young maiden Bitterly weeping, and she said: “O queen, Why hast thou wished in anger to be naught?