Paradiso: Canto XXVII
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
“Glory be to the Father, to the Son, And Holy Ghost!” all Paradise began, So that the melody inebriate made me.
What I beheld seemed unto me a smile Of the universe; for my inebriation Found entrance through the hearing and the sight.
O joy! O gladness inexpressible! O perfect life of love and peacefulness! O riches without hankering secure!
Before mine eyes were standing the four torches Enkindled, and the one that first had come Began to make itself more luminous;
And even such in semblance it became As Jupiter would become, if he and Mars Were birds, and they should interchange their feathers.
That Providence, which here distributeth Season and service, in the blessed choir Had silence upon every side imposed.
When I heard say: “If I my colour change, Marvel not at it; for while I am speaking Thou shalt behold all these their colour change.
He who usurps upon the earth my place, My place, my place, which vacant has become Before the presence of the Son of God,
Has of my cemetery made a sewer Of blood and stench, whereby the Perverse One, Who fell from here, below there is appeased!”
With the same colour which, through sun adverse, Painteth the clouds at evening or at morn, Beheld I then the whole of heaven suffused.
And as a modest woman, who abides Sure of herself, and at another’s failing, From listening only, timorous becomes,
Even thus did Beatrice change countenance; And I believe in heaven was such eclipse, When suffered the supreme Omnipotence;
Thereafterward proceeded forth his words With voice so much transmuted from itself, The very countenance was not more changed.
“The spouse of Christ has never nurtured been On blood of mine, of Linus and of Cletus, To be made use of in acquest of gold;
But in acquest of this delightful life Sixtus and Pius, Urban and Calixtus, After much lamentation, shed their blood.
Our purpose was not, that on the right hand Of our successors should in part be seated The Christian folk, in part upon the other;
Nor that the keys which were to me confided Should e’er become the escutcheon on a banner, That should wage war on those who are baptized;
Nor I be made the figure of a seal To privileges venal and mendacious, Whereat I often redden and flash with fire.
In garb of shepherds the rapacious wolves Are seen from here above o’er all the pastures! O wrath of God, why dost thou slumber still?
To drink our blood the Caorsines and Gascons Are making ready. O thou good beginning, Unto how vile an end must thou needs fall!
But the high Providence, that with Scipio At Rome the glory of the world defended, Will speedily bring aid, as I conceive;
And thou, my son, who by thy mortal weight Shalt down return again, open thy mouth; What I conceal not, do not thou conceal.”
As with its frozen vapours downward falls In flakes our atmosphere, what time the horn Of the celestial Goat doth touch the sun,
Upward in such array saw I the ether Become, and flaked with the triumphant vapours, Which there together with us had remained.
My sight was following up their semblances, And followed till the medium, by excess, The passing farther onward took from it;
Whereat the Lady, who beheld me freed From gazing upward, said to me: “Cast down Thy sight, and see how far thou art turned round.”
Since the first time that I had downward looked, I saw that I had moved through the whole arc Which the first climate makes from midst to end;
So that I saw the mad track of Ulysses Past Gades, and this side, well nigh the shore Whereon became Europa a sweet burden.
And of this threshing-floor the site to me Were more unveiled, but the sun was proceeding Under my feet, a sign and more removed.
My mind enamoured, which is dallying At all times with my Lady, to bring back To her mine eyes was more than ever ardent.
And if or Art or Nature has made bait To catch the eyes and so possess the mind, In human flesh or in its portraiture,
All joined together would appear as nought To the divine delight which shone upon me When to her smiling face I turned me round.
The virtue that her look endowed me with From the fair nest of Leda tore me forth, And up into the swiftest heaven impelled me.
Its parts exceeding full of life and lofty Are all so uniform, I cannot say Which Beatrice selected for my place.
But she, who was aware of my desire, Began, the while she smiled so joyously That God seemed in her countenance to rejoice:
“The nature of that motion, which keeps quiet The centre and all the rest about it moves, From hence begins as from its starting point.
And in this heaven there is no other Where Than in the Mind Divine, wherein is kindled The love that turns it, and the power it rains.
Within a circle light and love embrace it, Even as this doth the others, and that precinct He who encircles it alone controls.
Its motion is not by another meted, But all the others measured are by this, As ten is by the half and by the fifth.
And in what manner time in such a pot May have its roots, and in the rest its leaves, Now unto thee can manifest be made.