Paradiso (41 page)
Authors: Dante
‘Here you shall see both soldieries of Paradise,
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one of them in just such form
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as you shall see it at the final judgment.’
Like sudden lightning that confounds
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the faculty of sight, depriving eyes
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of taking in the clearest objects,
thus did a living light shine all around me,
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leaving me so swathed in the veil of its effulgence
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that I saw nothing else.
‘The love that calms this heaven
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always offers welcome with such greetings,
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to make the candle ready for its flame.’
No sooner had these few words reached my mind
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than I became aware of having risen
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above and well beyond my powers,
and such was the new vision kindled within me
that there exists no light so vivid that my eyes
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could not have borne its brightness.
And I saw light that flowed as flows a river,
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pouring its golden splendor between two banks
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painted with the wondrous colors of spring.
From that torrent issued living sparks
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and, on either bank, they settled on the flowers,
Then, as though intoxicated by the odors,
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they plunged once more into the marvelous flood,
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and, as one submerged, another would come forth.
‘The deep desire that now inflames and prods you
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to understand at last all that you see
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pleases me the more the more it surges.
‘But you must drink first of these waters
before your great thirst may be satisfied.’
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Thus the sun of my eyes spoke to me.
Then she continued: ‘The river, the topazes
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that enter and leave it, and the laughter of the meadows
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‘not that these things are in themselves unripe,
but because the failure lies with you,
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your vision is not yet strong enough to soar.’
No infant, waking up too late
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for his accustomed feeding, will thrust his face
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up to his milk with greater urgency,
than I, to make still better mirrors of my eyes,
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inclined my head down toward the water
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that flows there for our betterment,
and no sooner had the eaves of my eyelids
drunk deep of that water than to me it seemed
Then, like people wearing masks,
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once they put off the likeness not their own
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in which they hid, seem other than before,
the flowers and the sparks were changed before my eyes
into a greater celebration, so that I saw,
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before my very eyes, both courts of Heaven.
O splendor of God, by which I saw
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the lofty triumph of the one true kingdom,
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grant me the power to tell of what I saw!
There is a light above that makes the Creator
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visible to every creature
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that finds its only peace in seeing Him.
It spreads itself into so vast a circle
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that its circumference would be larger
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than the sphere that is the sun.
All that is seen of it comes as a ray reflected
from the summit of the Primum Mobile,
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which draws from this its motion and its powers.
And as a hillside is mirrored by the water
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at its foot, as if it saw itself adorned
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when it is lush with grass and flowers,
so I saw, rising above the light and all around it
mirrored in more than a thousand tiers,
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all those of us who have returned on high.
And, if the lowest of its ranks encloses
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a light so large, how vast is the expanse containing
Within that breadth and height,
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my sight was not confused but shared
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the full extent and quality of that rejoicing.
There, near and far do neither add nor take away,
for where God, unmediated, rules
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natural law has no effect.
I, like a man who is silent but would speak,
was led by Beatrice, and she said: ‘Behold
‘See our city, with its vast expanse!
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See how many are the seats already filled—
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few are the souls still absent there!
‘shall sit the soul of noble Henry,
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who on earth, as emperor, shall attempt
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to set things straight for Italy before she is prepared.
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‘Blind cupidity, bewitching you,
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has made you like the infant, dying of hunger,
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who shoves his nurse’s breast away.
‘At that time the prefect of the sacred court
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will be a man who will not make his way
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on the same road by daylight as he will by night.
‘But short shall be the time God suffers him
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in holy office, for he shall be thrust
down there where Simon Magus gets what he deserves,
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THE EMPYREAN
(St. Bernard)
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