the poor exalted and the rich brought low.
Now carry, written in your memory
(don’t speak!), report of him.’ He then said things
that even witnesses will not believe.
He added, then: ‘It was of this, dear son,
they spoke. These are the wiles and snares that lie
concealed by some few circlings of the stars.
Yet I’d not have you envy those around.
Your life and fame en-futures far beyond
the punishment their perfidy receives.’
Now falling silent, that most sacred soul
declared his hand unburdened of the thread
of that taut weave which I had stretched for him.
So I began – as anyone in doubt
goes on and craves good counsel from the one
who sees, whose will is right, whose love is strong.
‘I now see clearly, Father, how the years spur down
on me – and how the blow they mean to strike
is worse to those who, fleeing, flinch aside.
It’s better, then, I arm myself with foresight,
so if that dearest place is snatched away,
my verses do not lose me all the rest.
Down through the world of endless bitterness,
around the mountain where my lady’s look
raised me so I could reach its lovely peak,
then through these heavenly spheres, from light to light
I’ve learnt of things which, if I now repeat,
will leave in many mouths an acid taste.
And if I prove a timid friend to truth
I shall, I fear, forego my life among
those souls who’ll count as ancient our own time.’
The light in which the treasure I found there
was smiling still, first blazed in corruscations
as will a ray of sun in golden mirrors,
and then replied: ‘All murky consciences,
who feel their own or any other’s shame
are bound to baulk at your abrasive words.
But none the less, all lies put clean aside,
make plain what in your vision you have seen,
and let them scratch wherever they may itch.
For if at first your voice tastes odious,
still it will offer, as digestion works,
life-giving nutriment to those who eat.
The words you shout will be like blasts of wind
that strike the very summit of the trees.
And this will bring no small degree of fame.
For you’ve been shown in all these circling wheels –
around the mountain, in the sorrowing vale –
only those souls whose fame is widely known,
since those who hear you speak will never pause
or give belief to any instances
whose family roots are hidden or unknown,
nor demonstrations that remain obscure.’
Canto XXIII
Compare: a bird, among her well-loved boughs,
has rested all night long while things lie hid,
poised where her dear brood sleeps within their nest;
and then, to glimpse the looks she’s longed to see,
and find the food her fledglings feed upon
(these efforts weigh with her as pure delight)
before dawn comes she mounts an open sprig,
and there, her heart ablaze, awaits the sun,
eyes sharpening, fixed, till day is truly born.
So, too, head raised, tall, straight, my donna stood,
attention wholly on that stretch of sky
where, under noon, the sun displays least speed.
And I, to see her stand enraptured so,
became like one desiring still what he
has not – and yet in hope is satisfied.
But little time went by between these two –
I mean my waiting, and my seeing now
the skies that, brightening still, grew yet more bright.
And ‘Look!’ said Beatrice. ‘Triumphing,
the soldiery of Christ, and all the yield,
brought from the orbit of the farthest spheres!’
Her face, it seemed to me, now burned so bright,
her eyes so filled with utmost happiness,
that I must needs pass on and frame no word.
As in the calm, clear skies of moonlit nights,
tri-form Diana smiles (eternal nymphs,
around her, paint all Heaven’s curving spheres),
above a thousand lanterns or still more,
I saw one sun that, soaring, lit them all,
as our sun lights the stars seen over us.
And through this clear and living light there shone
the being that creates that glow, too bright
within my eyes for me to tolerate.
My sweetness! Beatrice, guiding me!
She spoke: ‘This power that overcomes your sight
is one from which no shelter can be sought.
Here is all wisdom, and the strength that cleared
the open road that runs from Heaven to earth,
for which so long was once such deep desire.’
As bolts of fire, unlocked from thunder clouds,
expand beyond containment in those bounds,
then fall to ground (as fire, by nature, can’t),
so, too, surrounded by this solemn feast,
my own mind, grown the greater now, went forth
and can’t remember what it then became.
‘Open your eyes and look at what I am!
You have seen things by which you’re made so strong,
you can, now, bear to look upon my smile.’
I was like one whose waking sense returns
yet strives in vain – his dreaming now oblivion –
to bring once more that vision back to mind,
as I now heard that utterance which deserves
a gratitude that never should be dimmed
from that great book that tells of things long past.
Even if all those voices were to sound
that Polyhymnia and her sister muses
fed on their sweetest milk so richly once,
and aid me, singing of that holy smile
and how her holy look grew purer still,
I’d still not reach one thousandth of the truth.
And so, imagining this Paradise,
the sacred epic has to make a leap,
as when we find the road ahead cut off.
Yet no one if they’ve gauged that weighty theme –
and seen what mortal shoulders bear the load –
would criticize such trembling backing-out.
The waves that my adventurous prow here cleaves
are no mere sea-loch that some skiff might cross,
or helmsmen lacking in the proper skill.
‘Why is it that my face in-loves you so
that you don’t turn to see the garden where,
beneath Christ’s rays, such beauty is en-flowered?
The rose in which the Word of God became
our flesh is here. And here those fleurs-de-lys
whose perfume marks the path we rightly tread.’
So, Beatrice. And I, quick to read
whatever she might counsel, gave myself
to battle, feeble though my eyelids were.
My eyes have seen at times – though wrapped in shade –
a ray of limpid sunlight, filtering
through broken cloud, across a field of flowers.
So here I saw a swirling crowd of splendours
flung out like thunderbolts down burning beams,
and could not see from where these flashes came.
You, Generous Strength! You leave your imprint here.
To open this arena to my eyes (powerless
to see You otherwise) You rose on high.
r /> The naming of that lovely flower which I,
at dawn and evening, call upon, compelled
my mind to face in full the greatest fire.
And as my eyes, together, now portrayed
the scope and nature of that bright, live star,
victorious there, victorious here below,
straight through the skies another torch came down
spun in a circle, as a crown might be,
and formed a ring around her, turning there.
The sweetest melody that sounds on earth,
or that which most attracts the soul to it,
would seem like cloud ripped wide by thunder claps
when heard beside the sounding of that lyre
whose notes now crowned the lovely sapphire-stone,
through whom the skies en-sapphire clearer still.
‘I am the angel-love called Gabriel,
encircling here the height of joy that breathes
around the womb our Longed-for sheltered in.
Lady of Heaven, I shall spin these turns
till, in procession, you, behind your son,
make the High Sphere, on entering, more divine.’
And so the perfect circling of that tune
sealed its conclusion, while the other lights
rang out the sound of Maria’s name.
The regal surcoat of those rolling spheres
that form our universe, alive with stars,
all shimmering at the breathing of God’s rule
now stretched its inner shore so far above
that nothing of it showed from where I was,
no glimpse of that First Mover came to view.
Therefore my eyes could not command the power
to follow as that flame, within its crown,
rose up so close behind the seed she’d borne.
A baby, suckling, once it’s full of milk,
will hold its arms out wide towards its mum
to make known outwardly its inner flame.
So, at their incandescent peaks, these gleams
stretched up. And this, to me, made clear what depths
of heartfelt love they bore towards Maria.
But all remained there, still within my sight,
singing in such sweet tones ‘Regina coeli’
delight at that will never leave my heart.
What richness, what abundance now well-stored
within such overflowing barns – which were
good husbandmen who sowed the seed below.
Here life is lived rejoicing in that hoard,
gained ever weeping in the exile years
of Babylon, when gold was put aside.
And here beneath the most exalted Son
of God and Mary, in His victory,
with all the new and all the ancient court,
triumphs the one who holds such glory’s key.
Canto XXVII
‘To Father and Son and the Holy Ghost,
glory on high!’ all Heaven here began,
till I, at that sweet song, reeled drunkenly.
And what I saw, it seemed, was now the laughter
of the universe. So drunkenness, for me,
came in through hearing and, no less, through sight.
The joy of that! The happiness beyond all words!
A life of peace and love, entire and whole!
Riches all free of craving, troubleless!
The faces of the four before my eyes
were bright with fire. That soul (the first who came)
began to grow more brilliant still at this.
And now, in how it looked, this face became
what Jove would be if he and Mars were birds,
and both exchanged their plumage, white for red.
The providence that makes division here
of duties, tasks and offices imposed
a perfect silence on the holy choir.
And then I heard: ‘If I change colour now,
don’t be amazed at that. For all of these,
as I go on, you’ll see change colour, too.
He who on earth has robbed me of my place,
my place, my place – which therefore, in the sight
of God’s dear Son, stands vacant now – has made
of my own burial ground a shit hole
reeking of blood and pus. In this the sod
who fell from here down there takes sheer delight.’
With that same colour that a cloud takes on,
morning or evening, when it meets the sun,
I saw, in every part, the heavens flush.
And as some innocent – herself quite clean
in conscience – when she notes another’s fault
may still, on hearing this, grow chaste and shy,
so Beatrice changed in countenance.
So, too, I think the heavens were once eclipsed
when Utmost Power submitted to the Cross.
And then Saint Peter’s words went on, his voice
transformed so utterly from what it was
that he, in look, could not have been more changed.
‘The Bride of Christ was not brought forth and raised
on blood of mine – of Linus, too, and Cletus –
to be made use of in pursuit of gold,
but rather, to pursue here living joy,
Sixtus and Pius, Urban, Calixtus,
after harsh tears all shed their blood for this.
We did not mean that some of Christ’s own race
should sit in favour on our heirs’ right hand,
and others, to the left, incur disgrace;
nor that the keys entrusted to my hands
should serve as battle emblem on the flag
that fought against those marked by baptism;
nor that, myself, I should become the stamp
that seals the sale of untrue privilege.
I flare and redden often at this thought.
Down there, in every pasture, ravening wolves
are seen dressed up as shepherds and as priests.
God our defence, why are you still unmoved?
Gascons along with bankers from Cahors
prepare themselves to drink our martyr blood.
To what corrupted ends good starts may sink!
But Providence on high that made defence
through Scipio at Rome of this world’s fame
will soon, as I conceive it, offer aid.
And you, my son, whose body weighs you down
so you’ll return below, speak openly
and do not hide what I don’t hide from you.’
When Sun and Goat Horn touch as winter signs,
the air in our terrestrial atmosphere
floats down in falls of frozen vapour flakes.
So now I saw, with upward sweeping flakes,
the aether decked in those triumphant airs
that first had passed their time with us below.
My eyes, in following these semblances,
followed until the space between became
so great it took away sight’s power to pass.
At which my lady, seeing me absolved
from all attention to the heights, now said:
‘Now sink your gaze, and see how far you’ve turned.’
I saw that since the time I’d first looked down
I’d moved in those six hours through all the arc,
mid-point to end, the first zone makes on earth,
so that I saw, beyond Cadiz, the mad
sea-jaunt of Ulysses and, east, the shore
where soft Europa once was borne away.
And more still of that eastward threshing floor
would have been shown me but, beneath my feet,
the sun, processing, reached a farther sign.
My mind, so deep in love that always woos,
as donna, my donna, burned more fiercely still
to turn its eyes on
ce more to where she was.
Though art or nature, to possess our minds,
may, in its paintings or in flesh itself,
produce beguiling pastures for our eyes,
these all would seem as nothing when compared
with that divine delight which shone on me
when I turned round to see her smiling look.
The inward powers her glance bestowed on me,
uprooting me from Leda’s lovely nest,
impelled me to the swiftest of the skies.
Its regions so exalted, living bright,
are all so uniform I cannot say
which Beatrice chose to be my place.
But she, who saw the strength of my desire,
laughing with such great happiness
that God appeared rejoicing in her face:
‘The order in the natural spheres that stills
the central point and moves, round that, all else,
here sets its confine and begins its rule.
This primal sphere has no “where” other than
the mind of God. The love that makes it turn
is kindled there, so, too, the powers it rains.
Brightness and love contain it in one ring,
as this, in turn, contains the spheres below.
And only He who binds it knows the bond.
Its motion is not gauged by other marks.
All other marks are measured out from this –
as ten is factored by its half and fifth.
So now it will be clear to you how Time
takes root within the humus of this bowl,
and shows its fronds in every other part.
Crass, itching greed! You plunge our mortal sense
so far within your depth that none can drag
their eyes above the mounting turbulence!
Intention blossoms well in human hearts.
But rain, unending rain, will render down
the true, ripe plum to shrivelled pods of blight.
Good faith and innocence are only found
in infant schools. And both will long have fled
before the cheek is covered with a beard.
There’s one kid, burbling still, awaiting food,
who when he’s fluent in his speech will gorge
on every dish, beneath whatever moon.
There’s one there (burbling, too) who loves his mum
and heeds her words, who, when his tongue grows whole,
will long to see her buried in her grave.
And so the whitest skin is scorched pitch black
merely to glimpse the lovely child of him
who brings the dawn and leaves behind the dark.
And you – so you should not suppose this strange –
think that on earth there’s no one who will rule,
and so the human family goes astray.