The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
And one among them who seemed sent from Heaven
clarioned: “Veni, sponsa, de Libano,”
three times, with all the others joining in.
As, at the last trump every saint shall rise
out of the grave, ready with voice new-fleshed
to carol Alleluliah to the skies;
just so, above the chariot, at the voice
of such an elder, rose a hundred Powers
and Principals of the Eternal Joys,
all saying together: “Benedictus qui venis”;
then, scattering flowers about on every side:
“Manibus o date lilia plenis.”
Time and again at daybreak I have seen
the eastern sky glow with a wash of rose
while all the rest hung limpid and serene,
and the Sun’s face rise tempered from its rest
so veiled by vapors that the naked eye
could look at it for minutes undistressed.
Exactly so, within a cloud of flowers
that rose like fountains from the angels’ hands
and fell about the chariot in showers,
a lady came in view: an olive crown
wreathed her immaculate veil, her cloak was green,
the colors of live flame played on her gown.
My soul—such years had passed since last it saw
that lady and stood trembling in her presence,
stupefied by the power of holy awe—
now, by some power that shone from her above
the reach and witness of my mortal eyes,
felt the full mastery of enduring love.
The instant I was smitten by the force,
which had already once transfixed my soul
before my boyhood years had run their course,
I turned left with the same assured belief
that makes a child run to its mother’s arms
when it is frightened or has come to grief,
to say to Virgil: “There is not within me
one drop of blood unstirred. I recognize
the tokens of the ancient flame.” But he,
he had taken his light from us. He had gone.
Virgil had gone. Virgil, the gentle Father
to whom I gave my soul for its salvation!
Not all that sight of Eden lost to view
by our First Mother could hold back the tears
that stained my cheeks so lately washed with dew.
“Dante, do not weep yet, though Virgil goes.
Do not weep yet, for soon another wound
shall make you weep far hotter tears than those!”
As an admiral takes his place at stern or bow
to observe the handling of his other ships
and spur all hands to do their best—so now,
on the chariot’s left side, I saw appear
when I turned at the sound of my own name
(which, necessarily, is recorded here),
that lady who had been half-veiled from view
by the flowers of the angel-revels. Now her eyes
fixed me across the stream, piercing me through.
And though the veil she still wore, held in place
by the wreathed flowers of wise Minerva’s leaves,
let me see only glimpses of her face,
her stern and regal bearing made me dread
her next words, for she spoke as one who saves
the heaviest charge till all the rest are read.
“Look at me well. I am she. I am Beatrice.
How dared you make your way to this high mountain?
Did you not know that here man lives in bliss?”
I lowered my head and looked down at the stream.
But when I saw myself reflected there,
I fixed my eyes upon the grass for shame.
I shrank as a wayward child in his distress
shrinks from his mother’s sternness, for the taste
of love grown wrathful is a bitterness.
She paused. At once the angel chorus sang
the blessed psalm: “In te, Domine, speravi.”
As far as “pedes meos” their voices rang.
As on the spine of Italy the snow
lies frozen hard among the living rafters
in winter when the northeast tempests blow;
then, melting if so much as a breath stir
from the land of shadowless noon, flows through itself
like hot wax trickling down a lighted taper—
just so I froze, too cold for sighs or tears
until I heard that choir whose notes are tuned
to the eternal music of the spheres.
But when I heard the voice of their compassion
plead for me more than if they had cried out:
“Lady, why do you treat him in this fashion?”;
the ice, which hard about my heart had pressed,
turned into breath and water, and flowed out
through eyes and throat in anguish from my breast.
Still standing at the chariot’s left side,
she turned to those compassionate essences
whose song had sought to move her, and replied:
“You keep your vigil in the Eternal Day
where neither night nor sleep obscures from you
a single step the world takes on its way;
but I must speak with greater care that he
who weeps on that far bank may understand
and feel a grief to match his guilt. Not only
by the workings of the spheres that bring each seed
to its fit end according to the stars
that ride above it, but by gifts decreed
in the largesse of overflowing Grace,
whose rain has such high vapors for its source
our eyes cannot mount to their dwelling place;
this man, potentially, was so endowed
from early youth that marvelous increase
should have come forth from every good he sowed.
But richest soil the soonest will grow wild
with bad seed and neglect. For a while I stayed him
with glimpses of my face. Turning my mild
and youthful eyes into his very soul,
I let him see their shining, and I led him
by the straight way, his face to the right goal.
The instant I had come upon the sill
of my second age, and crossed and changed my life,
he left me and let others shape his will.
When I rose from the flesh into the spirit,
to greater beauty and to greater virtue,
he found less pleasure in me and less merit.
He turned his steps aside from the True Way,
pursuing the false images of good
that promise what they never wholly pay.
Not all the inspiration I won by prayer
and brought to him in dreams and meditations
could call him back, so little did he care.
He fell so far from every hope of bliss
that every means of saving him had failed
except to let him see the damned. For this
I visited the portals of the dead
and poured my tears and prayers before that spirit
by whom his steps have, up to now, been led.
The seal Almighty God’s decree has placed
on the rounds of His creation would be broken
were he to come past Lethe and to taste
the water that wipes out the guilty years
without some scot of penitential tears!”
NOTES
1. the Septentrion of the First Heaven: The Septentrion is the seven stars of the Big Dipper. Here Dante means the seven candelabra. They are the Septentrion of the First Heaven (the Empyrean) as distinct from the seven stars of the dipper which occur lower down in the Sphere of the Fixed Stars.
2. which doe
5), in their less perfect way, guide the earthly helmsmen to their earthly ports.
7. the holy prophets: The twenty-four elders who represent the books of the Old Testament. (See XXIX, 64, note.)
10. one among them: The Song of Solomon.
11. Veni, sponsa, de Libano: “Come [with me] from Lebanon, my spouse.” Song of Solomon, iv, 8. This cry, re-echoed by choirs of angels, summons Beatrice, who may be taken here as revelation, faith, divine love, hence as the bride of the spirit, to Dante (man’s redeemed soul).
17-18. a hundred Powers and Principals: Angels.
19. Benedictus qui venis: “Blessed is he who cometh.” (Matthew, xxi, 9.)
21. Manibus o date lilia plenis: “Oh, give lilies with full hands.” These are the words of Anchises in honor of Marcellus. (Aeneid, VI, 883.) Thus they are not only apt to the occasion but their choice is a sweetly conceived last literary compliment to Virgil before he vanishes.
31. a lady: Beatrice. She is dressed in the colors of Faith (white), Hope (green), and Caritas (red).
34. since last it saw: Beatrice died in 1290. Thus Dante has passed ten years without sight of her.
36. stupefied: Dante describes the stupor of his soul at the sight of the living Beatrice in La Vita Nuova, XIV, and XXIV. Then, however, it was mortal love; here it is eternal, and the effect accordingly greater.
54. washed with dew: By Virgil. I, 124.
55. Dante: This is the only point in the Commedia at which Dante mentions his own name. Its usage here suggests many allegorical possibilities. Central to all of them, however, must be the fact that Dante, in ending one life (of the mind) and beginning a new one (of faith), hears his name. The suggestion of a second baptism is inevitable. And just as a child being baptized is struck by the priest, so Beatrice is about to strike him with her tongue before he may proceed to the holy water.
64. that lady: There are thirty-four Cantos in the Inferno and this is the thirtieth of the Purgatorio, hence the sixty-fourth Canto of the Commedia. This is the sixty-fourth line of the sixty-fourth Canto. In Dante’s numerology such correspondences are always meaningful. Six plus four equals ten and ten equals the sum of the square of trinity and unity. Obviously there can be no conclusive way of establishing intent in such a structure of mystic numbering, but it certainly is worth noting that the line begins with “that lady.” The Italian text, in fact, begins with vidi la donna, i.e., I saw the lady [who represents the sum of the square of trinity plus unity?]. The lady, of course, is Beatrice.
68. wise Minerva’s leaves: The olive crown.
80. his mother’s sternness: Beatrice appears in the pageant as the figure of the Church Triumphant. The Church is the mother of the devout and though she is stern, as law decrees, her sternness is that of a loving mother.
83-84. In te, Domine, speravi . . . pedes meos: In mercy the Angel chorus sings Psalm XXXI, 1-8, beginning “In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust” and continuing as far as “thou hast set my feet in a large room.”
85-90. the spine of Italy: The Apennines. the living rafters: The trees. the land of shadowless noon: Africa. In equatorial regions the noonday sun is at the zenith over each point twice a year. Its rays then fall straight down and objects cast no shadows.
101. compassionate essences: The Angel chorus.
106. greater care: For his understanding than for your intercession.
109-11. the workings of the spheres . . . : The influence of the stars in their courses which incline men at birth to good or evil ends according to the astrological virtue of their conjunctions.
114. our eyes: Beatrice is still replying to the plea of the Angel choir. Hence “our eyes” must refer not to mortal eyes, but to the eyes of the blessed. Not even such more-than-human eyes may mount to the high place of those vapors, for that place is nothing less than the Supreme Height, since Grace flows from God Himself.
124-126. my second age: Beatrice’s womanhood. When she had reached the full bloom of youth Dante turned from her and wrote to his donna gentile. Allegorically, he turned from divine “sciences” to an overreliance upon philosophy (the human “sciences”). For this sin he must suffer.
144-145. were he to come past Lethe: In passing Lethe and drinking its waters, the soul loses all memory of guilt. This, therefore, is Dante’s last opportunity to do penance.
Canto XXXI
THE EARTHLY PARADISE
Lethe Beatrice, Matilda
Beatrice continues her reprimand, forcing Dante to confess his faults until he swoons with grief and pain at the thought of his sin. He wakes to find himself in Lethe, held in the arms of Matilda, who leads him to the other side of the stream and there immerses him that he may drink the waters that wipe out all memory of sin.
Matilda then leads him to THE FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES, who dance about him and lead him before THE GRIFFON where he may look into THE EYES OF BEATRICE. In them Dante sees, in a FIRST BEATIFIC VISION, the radiant reflection of the Griffon, who appears now in his human and now in his godly nature.
THE THREE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES now approach and beg that Dante may behold THE SMILE OF BEATRICE. Beatrice removes her veil, and in a SECOND BEATIFIC VISION, Dante beholds the splendor of the unveiled shining of Divine Love.
“You, there, who stand upon the other side—”
(turning to me now, who had thought the edge
of her discourse was sharp, the point) she cried
without pause in her flow of eloquence,
“Speak up! Speak up! Is it true? To such a charge
your own confession must give evidence.”
I stood as if my spirit had turned numb:
the organ of my speech moved, but my voice
died in my throat before a word could come.
Briefly she paused, then cried impatiently:
“What are you thinking? Speak up, for the waters
have yet to purge sin from your memory.”
Confusion joined to terror forced a broken
“yes” from my throat, so weak that only one
who read my lips would know that I had spoken.
As an arbalest will snap when string and bow
are drawn too tight by the bowman, and the bolt
will strike the target a diminished blow—
so did I shatter, strengthless and unstrung,
under her charge, pouring out floods of tears,
while my voice died in me on the way to my tongue.
And she: “Filled as you were with the desire
I taught you for That Good beyond which nothing
exists on earth to which man may aspire,
what yawning moats or what stretched chain-lengths lay
across your path to force you to abandon
all hope of pressing further on your way?
What increase or allurement seemed to show
in the brows of others that you walked before them
as a lover walks below his lady’s window?”
My breath dragged from me in a bitter sigh;
I barely found a voice to answer with;
my lips had trouble forming a reply.
In tears I said: “The things of the world’s day,
false pleasures and enticements, turned my steps
as soon as you had ceased to light my way.”
And she: “Had you been silent, or denied
what you confess, your guilt would still be known
to Him from Whom no guilt may hope to hide.
But here, before our court, when souls upbraid
themselves for their own guilt in true remorse,
&n
In any case that you may know your crime