Purgatorio: Canto XXXI
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
As in a glass the sun, not otherwise Within them was the twofold monster shining, Now with the one, now with the other nature.
Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled, When I beheld the thing itself stand still, And in its image it transformed itself.
While with amazement filled and jubilant, My soul was tasting of the food, that while It satisfies us makes us hunger for it,
Themselves revealing of the highest rank In bearing, did the other three advance, Singing to their angelic saraband.
“Turn, Beatrice, O turn thy holy eyes,” Such was their song, “unto thy faithful one, Who has to see thee ta’en so many steps.
In grace do us the grace that thou unveil Thy face to him, so that he may discern The second beauty which thou dost conceal.”
O splendour of the living light eternal! Who underneath the shadow of Parnassus Has grown so pale, or drunk so at its cistern,
He would not seem to have his mind encumbered Striving to paint thee as thou didst appear, Where the harmonious heaven o’ershadowed thee,
When in the open air thou didst unveil?