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

waste of paper.1797
The walls that used of old to be an Abbey
Are changed to dens of robbers, and the cowls1798
Are sacks filled full of miserable flour.
But heavy usury is not taken up1799
So much against God’s pleasure as that fruit
Which maketh so insane the heart of monks;
For whatsoever hath the Church in keeping
Is for the folk that ask it in God’s name,
Not for one’s kindred or for something worse.
The flesh of mortals is so very soft,
That good beginnings down below suffice not
From springing of the oak to bearing acorns.
Peter began with neither gold nor silver,
And I with orison and abstinence,
And Francis with humility his convent.
And if thou lookest at each one’s beginning,
And then regardest whither he has run,
Thou shalt behold the white changed into brown.
In verity the Jordan backward turned,1800
And the sea’s fleeing, when God willed were more
A wonder to behold, than succor here.”
Thus unto me he said; and then withdrew
To his own band, and the band closed together;
Then like a whirlwind all was upward rapt.
The gentle Lady urged me on behind them
Up o’er that stairway by a single sign,
So did her virtue overcome my nature;
Nor here below, where one goes up and down
By natural law, was motion e’er so swift
That it could be compared unto my wing.
Reader, as I may unto that devout
Triumph return, on whose account I often1801
For my transgressions weep and beat my breast⁠—
Thou hadst not thrust thy finger in the fire
And drawn it out again, before I saw
The sign that follows Taurus, and was in it.1802
O glorious stars, O light impregnated1803
With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge
All of my genius, whatsoe’er it be,
With you was born, and hid himself with you,1804
He who is father of all mortal life,
When first I tasted of the Tuscan air;
And then when grace was freely given to me
To enter the high wheel which turns you round,1805
Your region was allotted unto me.
To you devoutly at this hour my soul
Is sighing, that it virtue may acquire
For the stern pass that draws it to itself.
“Thou art so near unto the last salvation,”
Thus Beatrice began, “thou oughtest now
To have thine eves unclouded and acute;
And therefore, ere thou enter farther in,
Look down once more, and see how vast a world
Thou hast already put beneath thy feet;
So that thy heart, as jocund as it may,
Present itself to the triumphant throng
That comes rejoicing through this rounded ether.”
I with my sight returned through one and all
The sevenfold spheres, and I beheld this globe
Such that I smiled at its ignoble semblance;1806
And that opinion I approve as best
Which doth account it least; and he who thinks
Of something else may truly be called just.
I saw the daughter of Latona shining1807
Without that shadow, which to me was cause
That once I had believed her rare and dense.1808
The aspect of thy son, Hyperion,1809
Here I sustained, and saw how move themselves
Around and near him Maia and Dione.1810
Thence there appeared the temperateness of Jove1811
’Twixt son and father, and to me was clear
The change that of their whereabout they make;
And all the seven made manifest to me
How great they are, and eke how swift they are,1812
And how they are in distant habitations.
The threshing-floor that maketh us so proud,1813
To me revolving with the eternal Twins,
Was all apparent made from hill to harbour!
Then to the beauteous eyes mine eyes I turned. Canto XXIII

The triumph of Christ.

Even as a bird, ’mid the beloved leaves,1814
Quiet upon the nest of her sweet brood
Throughout the night, that hideth all things from us,1815
Who, that she may behold their longed-for looks
And find the food wherewith to nourish them,
In which, to her, grave labors grateful are,
Anticipates the time on open spray
And with an ardent longing waits the sun,
Gazing intent as soon as breaks the dawn:
Even thus my Lady standing was, erect
And vigilant, turned round towards the zone
Underneath which the sun displays less haste;1816
So that beholding her distraught and wistful,
Such I became as he is who desiring
For something yearns, and hoping is appeased.
But brief the space from one When to the other;
Of my awaiting, say I, and the seeing
The welkin grow resplendent more and more.
And Beatrice exclaimed: “Behold the hosts
Of Christ’s triumphal march, and all the fruit1817
Harvested by the rolling of these spheres!”1818
It seemed to me her face was all aflame;
And eyes she had so full of ecstasy
That I must needs pass on without describing.
As when in nights serene of the full moon
Smiles Trivia among the nymphs eternal1819
Who paint the firmament through all its gulfs,
Saw I, above the myriads of lamps,
A Sun that one and all of them enkindled,1820
E’en as our own doth the supernal sights,1821
And through the living light transparent shone
The lucent substance so intensely clear
Into my sight, that I sustained it not.
O Beatrice, thou gentle guide and dear!
To me she said: “What overmasters thee
A virtue is from which naught shields itself.
There are the wisdom and the omnipotence
That oped the thoroughfares ’twixt heaven and earth,
For which there erst had been so long a yearning.”
As fire from out a cloud unlocks itself,
Dilating so it finds not room therein,
And down, against its nature, falls to earth,
So did my mind, among those aliments
Becoming larger, issue from itself,
And that which