The Portable Dante (67 page)

But his own flock is growing greedy now for richer food, and in their hungry search they stray to alien pastures carelessly;

the farther off his sheep go wandering from him in all directions, the less milk they bring back when they come back to the fold.

True, there are some who, fearing loss, will keep close to their shepherd, but so few are these it would not take much cloth to make their cowls.

Now, if my speech has not been too obscure, and if you have been listening carefully, and if you will recall my former words,

your wish will have been satisfied in part, for you will have seen how the tree is chipped and why I made the qualifying statement:

’where all may fatten if they do not stray. ’ “

The very moment that the blessed flame had come to speak its final word, the holy millstone began revolving once again;

before it could complete its first full round a second circle was enclosing it: motion with motion, matching song with song—

song that in those sweet instruments surpassed the best our Sirens or our Muses sing, as source of light outshines what it reflects.

As two concentric arcs of equal hue, are seen as they bend through the misty clouds when Juno tells her handmaid to appear—

the outer from the inner one an echo, like to the longing voice of her whom love consumed as morning sun consumes the dew—

and reassure the people here below that by the covenant God made with Noah, they have no need to fear another Flood—

even so those sempiternal roses wreathed twin garlands round us as the outer one was lovingly responding to the inner.

When dancing and sublime festivity and all the singing, all the gleaming flames (a loving jubilee of light with light),

with one accord, at the same instant, ceased (as our two eyes responding to our will, together have to open and to close),

then, from the heart of one of those new lights there came a voice that drew me to itself (I was the needle pointing to the star);

it spoke: “The love that makes me beautiful moves me to speak about that other guide, the cause of such high praise concerning mine.

We should not mention one without the other, since both did battle for a single cause, so let their fame shine gloriously as one.

The troops of Christ, rearmed at such great cost, with tardy pace were following their standard, fearful and few, divided in their ranks,

when the Emperor who reigns eternally, of His own grace (for they were not deserving) provided for his soldiers in their peril—

and, as you have been told, He sent His bride two champions who through their words and deeds helped reunite the scattered company.

Within that region where the sweet west wind comes blowing, opening up the fresh new leaves with which all Europe is about to bloom,

not far from where the waves break on the shore behind which, when its longest course is done, the sun, at times, will hide from every man,

lies Calaroga, fortune-favored town, protected by the mighty shield that bears two lions: one as subject, one as sovereign.

There the staunch lover of the Christian faith was born into the world: God’s holy athlete, kind to his own and ruthless to his foes.

His mind, the instant God created it, possessed extraordinary power: within his mother’s womb he made her prophesy.

The day that he was wed to Christian Faith at the baptismal font, when each of them promised the other mutual salvation,

the lady who had answered for him there saw in a dream the marvelous rich fruit that he and all his heirs were to produce,

and that he might be known for what he was, a spirit sent from Heaven named the child with His possessive, Whose alone he was:

Dominic he was named. I see in him the husbandman, the one chosen by Christ to help Him in the garden of His Church.

Close servant and true messenger of Christ, he made it manifest that his first love was love for the first counsel given by Christ.

Often his nurse would find him out of bed, awake and silent, lying on the ground, as if to say, “For this end was I sent. ”

O father Felix, felicitously named! O mother called Giovanna, ‘grace of God!’ And these names truly mean what they express.

Not like those men who toil for worldly gain, studying Thaddeus and the Ostian, but for the love of the eternal bread,

he soon became a mighty theologian, a diligent inspector of the vineyard, where the vine withers if the keeper fails.

And from the See which once was so benign to its deserving poor (but now corrupt, not in itself but in its occupant)

no right to pay out two or three for six, nor first choice of some fat and vacant post, nor
decimas quae sunt pauperum Dei,

did he request, but just the right to fight the sinful world for that true seed whence sprang the four and twenty plants surrounding you.

Then, armed with doctrine and a zealous will with apostolic sanction, he burst forth —a mighty torrent gushing from on high;

sending its crushing force against the barren thickets of heresy, and where they were toughest, it struck with greatest violence.

And from him many other streams branched off to give their waters to the Catholic fields so that its saplings might have greener life.

If such was one wheel of the chariot that Holy Church used to defend herself and conquer on the field of civil strife,

you cannot fail to see how excellent the other must have been, about whom Thomas, before I came, spoke with such courtesy.

But now the track made by the topmost part of that great wheel’s circumference is gone, and there is only mold where once was crust.

His family, which once walked straight ahead in his own footprints, now are so turned round they walk along by putting toe to heel.

Soon comes the harvest time and we shall see how bad the tillage was: the tares will mourn that access to the storehouse is denied.

I will admit that if you search our book page after page you might find one that reads: ’I still am now what I have always been, ’

but such cannot be said of those who come from Acquasparta or Casal and read our rule too loosely or too narrowly.

I am the living soul of Bonaventure from Bagnoregio; temporal concerns always came last when I was in command.

Illuminato and Augustine are here, they were the first of God’s barefooted poor who wore the cord to show they were His friends.

Hugh of St. Victor is among them too, with Peter Mangiador, and Peter of Spain who in twelve books illumines men below,

Nathan the prophet, and the Patriarch Chrysostom, Anselm, and Donatus who devoted all his thought to the first art.

Rabanus, too, is here, and at my side shines the Calabrian Abbot Joachim who had received the gift of prophecy.

The glowing courtesy of Brother Thomas, his modesty of words, have prompted me to praise this paladin as I have done

and moved this fellowship to join with me. ”