Paradiso: Canto XXVI
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
And him I saw return to all the lights Of his highway nine hundred times and thirty, Whilst I upon the earth was tarrying.
The language that I spake was quite extinct Before that in the work interminable The people under Nimrod were employed;
For nevermore result of reasoning (Because of human pleasure that doth change, Obedient to the heavens) was durable.
A natural action is it that man speaks; But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave To your own art, as seemeth best to you.
Ere I descended to the infernal anguish, ‘El’ was on earth the name of the Chief Good, From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round
‘Eli’ he then was called, and that is proper, Because the use of men is like a leaf On bough, which goeth and another cometh.
Upon the mount that highest o’er the wave Rises was I, in life or pure or sinful, From the first hour to that which is the second,
As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth.”