Paradiso: Canto XXV
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
So I became before that latest fire, While it was said, “Why dost thou daze thyself To see a thing which here hath no existence?
Earth in the earth my body is, and shall be With all the others there, until our number With the eternal proposition tallies.
With the two garments in the blessed cloister Are the two lights alone that have ascended: And this shalt thou take back into your world.”
And at this utterance the flaming circle Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling Of sound that by the trinal breath was made,
As to escape from danger or fatigue The oars that erst were in the water beaten Are all suspended at a whistle’s sound.
Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed, When I turned round to look on Beatrice, That her I could not see, although I was
Close at her side and in the Happy World!