The noble virtue Beatrice understands
By the free will; and therefore see that thouBear it in mind, if she should speak of it.”
The moon, belated almost unto midnight,Now made the stars appear to us more rare,Formed like a bucket, that is all ablaze,
And counter to the heavens ran through those pathsWhich the sun sets aflame, when he of RomeSees it ’twixt Sardes and Corsicans go down;
And that patrician shade, for whom is namedPietola more than any Mantuan town,Had laid aside the burden of my lading;
Whence I, who reason manifest and plainIn answer to my questions had received,Stood like a man in drowsy reverie.
But taken from me was this drowsinessSuddenly by a people, that behindOur backs already had come round to us.
And as, of old, Ismenus and AsopusBeside them saw at night the rush and throng,If but the Thebans were in need of Bacchus,
So they along that circle curve their step,From what I saw of those approaching us,Who by good-will and righteous love are ridden.
Full soon they were upon us, because runningMoved onward all that mighty multitude,And two in the advance cried out, lamenting,
“Mary in haste unto the mountain ran,And Caesar, that he might subdue Ilerda,Thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain.”
“Quick! quick! so that the time may not be lostBy little love!” forthwith the others cried,“For ardour in well-doing freshens grace!”
“O folk, in whom an eager fervour nowSupplies perhaps delay and negligence,Put by you in well-doing, through lukewarmness,
This one who lives, and truly I lie not,Would fain go up, if but the sun relight us;So tell us where the passage nearest is.”
These were the words of him who was my Guide;And some one of those spirits said: “Come onBehind us, and the opening shalt thou find;
So full of longing are we to move onward,That stay we cannot; therefore pardon us,If thou for churlishness our justice take.
I was San Zeno’s Abbot at Verona,Under the empire of good Barbarossa,Of whom still sorrowing Milan holds discourse;
And he has one foot in the grave already,Who shall erelong lament that monastery,And sorry be of having there had power,
Because his son, in his whole body sick,And worse in mind, and who was evil-born,He put into the place of its true pastor.”
If more he said, or silent was, I know not,He had already passed so far beyond us;But this I heard, and to retain it pleased me.
And he who was in every need my succourSaid: “Turn thee hitherward; see two of themCome fastening upon slothfulness their teeth.”
In rear of all they shouted: “Sooner wereThe people dead to whom the sea was opened,Than their inheritors the Jordan saw;
And those who the fatigue did not endureUnto the issue, with Anchises’ son,Themselves to life withouten glory offered.”
Then when from us so separated wereThose shades, that they no longer could be seen,Within me a new thought did entrance find,
Whence others many and diverse were born;And so I lapsed from one into another,That in a reverie mine eyes I closed,
And meditation into dream transmuted.
Purgatorio: Canto XIX
It was the hour when the diurnal heatNo more can warm the coldness of the moon,Vanquished by earth, or peradventure Saturn,