LITMIR.BIZ

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In such a way, that to the East I faced.

      Nor even thus our way continued far

       Before the lady wholly turned herself

       Unto me, saying, "Brother, look and listen!"

      And lo! a sudden lustre ran across

       On every side athwart the spacious forest,

       Such that it made me doubt if it were lightning.

      But since the lightning ceases as it comes,

       And that continuing brightened more and more,

       Within my thought I said, "What thing is this?"

      And a delicious melody there ran

       Along the luminous air, whence holy zeal

       Made me rebuke the hardihood of Eve;

      For there where earth and heaven obedient were,

       The woman only, and but just created,

       Could not endure to stay 'neath any veil;

      Underneath which had she devoutly stayed,

       I sooner should have tasted those delights

       Ineffable, and for a longer time.

      While 'mid such manifold first-fruits I walked

       Of the eternal pleasure all enrapt,

       And still solicitous of more delights,

      In front of us like an enkindled fire

       Became the air beneath the verdant boughs,

       And the sweet sound as singing now was heard.

      O Virgins sacrosanct! if ever hunger,

       Vigils, or cold for you I have endured,

       The occasion spurs me their reward to claim!

      Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me,

       And with her choir Urania must assist me,

       To put in verse things difficult to think.

      A little farther on, seven trees of gold

       In semblance the long space still intervening

       Between ourselves and them did counterfeit;

      But when I had approached so near to them

       The common object, which the sense deceives,

       Lost not by distance any of its marks,

      The faculty that lends discourse to reason

       Did apprehend that they were candlesticks,

       And in the voices of the song "Hosanna!"

      Above them flamed the harness beautiful,

       Far brighter than the moon in the serene

       Of midnight, at the middle of her month.

      I turned me round, with admiration filled,

       To good Virgilius, and he answered me

       With visage no less full of wonderment.

      Then back I turned my face to those high things,

       Which moved themselves towards us so sedately,

       They had been distanced by new-wedded brides.

      The lady chid me: "Why dost thou burn only

       So with affection for the living lights,

       And dost not look at what comes after them?"

      Then saw I people, as behind their leaders,

       Coming behind them, garmented in white,

       And such a whiteness never was on earth.

      The water on my left flank was resplendent,

       And back to me reflected my left side,

       E'en as a mirror, if I looked therein.

      When I upon my margin had such post

       That nothing but the stream divided us,

       Better to see I gave my steps repose;

      And I beheld the flamelets onward go,

       Leaving behind themselves the air depicted,

       And they of trailing pennons had the semblance,

      So that it overhead remained distinct

       With sevenfold lists, all of them of the colours

       Whence the sun's bow is made, and Delia's girdle.

      These standards to the rearward longer were

       Than was my sight; and, as it seemed to me,

       Ten paces were the outermost apart.

      Under so fair a heaven as I describe

       The four and twenty Elders, two by two,

       Came on incoronate with flower-de-luce.

      They all of them were singing: "Blessed thou

       Among the daughters of Adam art, and blessed

       For evermore shall be thy loveliness."

      After the flowers and other tender grasses

       In front of me upon the other margin

       Were disencumbered of that race elect,

      Even as in heaven star followeth after star,

       There came close after them four animals,

       Incoronate each one with verdant leaf.

      Plumed with six wings was every one of them,

       The plumage full of eyes; the eyes of Argus

       If they were living would be such as these.

      Reader! to trace their forms no more I waste

       My rhymes; for other spendings press me so,

       That I in this cannot be prodigal.

      But read Ezekiel, who depicteth them

       As he beheld them from the region cold

       Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire;

      And such as thou shalt find them in his pages,

       Such were they here; saving that in their plumage

       John is with me, and differeth from him.

      The interval between these four contained

       A chariot triumphal on two wheels,

       Which by a Griffin's neck came drawn along;

      And upward he extended both his wings

       Between the middle list and three and three,

       So that he injured none by cleaving it.

      So high they rose that they were lost to sight;

       His limbs were gold, so far as he was bird,

       And white the others with vermilion mingled.

      Not only Rome with no such splendid car

       E'er gladdened Africanus, or Augustus,

       But poor to it that of the Sun would be,—

      That of the Sun, which swerving was burnt up

       At the importunate orison of Earth,

       When Jove was so mysteriously just.

      Three maidens at the right wheel in a circle

       Came onward dancing; one so very red

       That in the fire she hardly had been noted.

      The second was as if her flesh and bones

       Had all been fashioned out of emerald;

       The third appeared as snow but newly fallen.

      And now they seemed conducted by the white,

      

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