Purgatorio: Canto XXIX
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
Singing like unto an enamoured lady She, with the ending of her words, continued: “Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata.”
And even as Nymphs, that wandered all alone Among the sylvan shadows, sedulous One to avoid and one to see the sun,
She then against the stream moved onward, going Along the bank, and I abreast of her, Her little steps with little steps attending.
Between her steps and mine were not a hundred, When equally the margins gave a turn, In such a way, that to the East I faced.
Nor even thus our way continued far Before the lady wholly turned herself Unto me, saying, “Brother, look and listen!”
And lo! a sudden lustre ran across On every side athwart the spacious forest, Such that it made me doubt if it were lightning.
But since the lightning ceases as it comes, And that continuing brightened more and more, Within my thought I said, “What thing is this?”
And a delicious melody there ran Along the luminous air, whence holy zeal Made me rebuke the hardihood of Eve;
For there where earth and heaven obedient were, The woman only, and but just created, Could not endure to stay ’neath any veil;
Underneath which had she devoutly stayed, I sooner should have tasted those delights Ineffable, and for a longer time.
While ’mid such manifold first-fruits I walked Of the eternal pleasure all enrapt, And still solicitous of more delights,
In front of us like an enkindled fire Became the air beneath the verdant boughs, And the sweet sound as singing now was heard.
O Virgins sacrosanct! if ever hunger, Vigils, or cold for you I have endured, The occasion spurs me their reward to claim!
Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me, And with her choir Urania must assist me, To put in verse things difficult to think.
A little farther on, seven trees of gold In semblance the long space still intervening Between ourselves and them did counterfeit;
But when I had approached so near to them The common object, which the sense deceives, Lost not by distance any of its marks,
The faculty that lends discourse to reason Did apprehend that they were candlesticks, And in the voices of the song “Hosanna!”
Above them flamed the harness beautiful, Far brighter than the moon in the serene Of midnight, at the middle of her month.
I turned me round, with admiration filled, To good Virgilius, and he answered me With visage no less full of wonderment.
Then back I turned my face to those high things, Which moved themselves towards us so sedately, They had been distanced by new-wedded brides.
The lady chid me: “Why dost thou burn only So with affection for the living lights, And dost not look at what comes after them?”
Then saw I people, as behind their leaders, Coming behind them, garmented in white, And such a whiteness never was on earth.
The water on my left flank was resplendent, And back to me reflected my left side, E’en as a mirror, if I looked therein.
When I upon my margin had such post That nothing but the stream divided us, Better to see I gave my steps repose;
And I beheld the flamelets onward go, Leaving behind themselves the air depicted, And they of trailing pennons had the semblance,
So that it overhead remained distinct With sevenfold lists, all of them of the colours Whence the sun’s bow is made, and Delia’s girdle.
These standards to the rearward longer were Than was my sight; and, as it seemed to me, Ten paces were the outermost apart.
Under so fair a heaven as I describe The four and twenty Elders, two by two, Came on incoronate with flower-de-luce.
They all of them were singing: “Blessed thou Among the daughters of Adam art, and blessed For evermore shall be thy loveliness.”
After the flowers and other tender grasses In front of me upon the other margin Were disencumbered of that race elect,
Even as in heaven star followeth after star, There came close after them four animals, Incoronate each one with verdant leaf.
Plumed with six wings was every one of them, The plumage full of eyes; the eyes of Argus If they were living would be such as these.
Reader! to trace their forms no more I waste My rhymes; for other spendings press me so, That I in this cannot be prodigal.
But read Ezekiel, who depicteth them As he beheld them from the region cold Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire;
And such as thou shalt find them in his pages, Such were they here; saving that in their plumage John is with me, and differeth from him.
The interval between these four contained A chariot triumphal on two wheels, Which by a Griffin’s neck came drawn along;
And upward he extended both his wings Between the middle list and three and three, So that he injured none by cleaving it.
So high they rose that they were lost to sight; His limbs were gold, so far as he was bird, And white the others with vermilion mingled.
Not only Rome with no such splendid car E’er gladdened Africanus, or Augustus, But poor to it that of the Sun would be,—
That of the Sun, which swerving was burnt up At the importunate orison of Earth, When Jove was so mysteriously just.