The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

of Rascia too,1739
Who saw in evil hour the coin of Venice.1740
O happy Hungary, if she let herself1741
Be wronged no farther! and Navarre the happy,
If with the hills that gird her she be armed!1742
And each one may believe that now, as hansel1743
Thereof, do Nicosia and Famagosta1744
Lament and rage because of their own beast,
Who from the others’ flank departeth not.”1745 Canto XX

The eagle praises the righteous kings of old.

When he who all the world illuminates1746
Out of our hemisphere so far descends
That on all sides the daylight is consumed,1747
The heaven, that erst by him alone was kindled,
Doth suddenly reveal itself again1748
By many lights, wherein is one resplendent.
And came into my mind this act of heaven,
When the ensign of the world and of its leaders
Had silent in the blessed beak become;
Because those living luminaries all,
By far more luminous, did songs begin
Lapsing and falling from my memory.
O gentle Love, that with a smile dost cloak thee,
How ardent in those sparks didst thou appear,
That had the breath alone of holy thoughts!
After the precious and pellucid crystals,
With which begemmed the sixth light I beheld,
Silence imposed on the angelic bells,
I seemed to hear the murmuring of a river
That clear descendeth down from rock to rock,
Showing the affluence of its mountain-top.
And as the sound upon the cithern’s neck
Taketh its form, and as upon the vent
Of rustic pipe the wind that enters it,
Even thus, relieved from the delay of waiting,
That murmuring of the eagle mounted up
Along its neck, as if it had been hollow.
There it became a voice, and issued thence
From out its beak, in such a form of words
As the heart waited for wherein I wrote them.
“The part in me which sees and bears the sun
In mortal eagles,” it began to me,
“Now fixedly must needs be looked upon;
For of the fires of which I make my figure,
Those whence the eye doth sparkle in my head
Of all their orders the supremest are.
He who is shining in the midst as pupil1749
Was once the singer of the Holy Spirit,
Who bore the ark from city unto city;
Now knoweth he the merit of his song,
In so far as effect of his own counsel,1750
By the reward which is commensurate.
Of five, that make a circle for my brow,
He that approacheth nearest to my beak1751
Did the poor widow for her son console;
Now knoweth he how dearly it doth cost
Not following Christ, by the experience
Of this sweet life and of its opposite.
He who comes next in the circumference1752
Of which I speak, upon its highest arc,
Did death postpone by penitence sincere;1753
Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment
Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer
Maketh below tomorrow of today.
The next who follows, with the laws and me,1754
Under the good intent that bore bad fruit1755
Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor;
Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced
From his good action is not harmful to him,
Although the world thereby may be destroyed.
And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest,
Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores1756
That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive;
Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is
With a just king; and in the outward show
Of his effulgence he reveals it still.
Who would believe, down in the errant world,
That e’er the Trojan Ripheus in this round1757
Could be the fifth one of the holy lights?
Now knoweth he enough of what the world
Has not the power to see of grace divine,
Although his sight may not discern the bottom.”
Like as a lark that in the air expatiates,1758
First singing and then silent with content
Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her,
Such seemed to me the image of the imprint
Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will
Doth everything become the thing it is.
And notwithstanding to my doubt I was
As glass is to the color that invests it,
To wait the time in silence it endured not,
But forth from out my mouth, “What things are these?”
Extorted with the force of its own weight;
Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation.
Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled
The blessed standard made to me reply,
To keep me not in wonderment suspended:
“I see that thou believest in these things
Because I say them, but thou seest not how;
So that, although believed in, they are hidden.
Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name
Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity1759
Cannot perceive, unless another show it.
Regnum cœlorum suffereth violence1760
From fervent love, and from that living hope
That overcometh the Divine volition;
Not in the guise that man o’ercometh man,
But conquers it because it will be conquered,
And conquered conquers by benignity.
The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth1761
Cause thee astonishment, because with them
Thou seest the region of the angels painted.
They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest,
Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith
Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered.1762
For one from Hell, where no one e’er turns back1763
Unto good will, returned unto his bones,
And that of living hope was the reward⁠—
Of living hope, that placed its efficacy
In prayers to God made to resuscitate him,
So that ’twere possible to move his will.1764
The glorious soul concerning which I speak,1765
Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay,
Believed in Him who had the power