The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Dante Alighieri

Author:Dante Alighieri
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781101608388
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

CANTO 10

1 Looking within his Son through that same Love

that Each breathes out eternally with Each,

the first and three-fold Worth, beyond all words,

4 formed all that spins through intellect or space

in such clear order it can never be,

that we, in wonder, fail to taste Him there.

7* Lift up your eyes, then, reader, and, along with

me, look to those wheels, directed to that part

where motions – yearly and diurnal – clash.

10 And there, entranced, begin to view the skill

the Master demonstrates. Within Himself,

He loves it so, His looking never leaves.

13 Look! Where those orbits meet, there branches off

the slanting circles that the planets ride

to feed and fill the world that calls on them.

16 And were the path it takes not twisted so,

then many astral virtues would be wasted,

and almost all potential, down here, dead.

19 And were the distance any more or less

from that straight course, then much – above and here –

so ordered in the world, would be a void.

22 Now, reader, sit there at your lecture bench.

And, if you want not tedium but joy,

continue thinking of the sip you’ve had.

25 I’ve laid it out. Now feed on it yourself.

The theme of which I’m made to be scribe

drags in its own direction all my thoughts.

28* The greatest minister of natural life

who prints the worth of Heaven on the world,

and measures time for us in shining light,

31 conjoined with Aries (as we’ve called to mind),

was spinning through those spirals where, each hour,

its presence is revealed to us the sooner.

34 And with him I was there, but no more knew

of making that ascent than anyone

will know a thought before it first appears.

37 It’s she – Beatrice – who sees the way,

from good to better still, so suddenly

her actions aren’t stretched out in passing time.

40 How brilliant they must all, themselves, have been

seen in the sun where I now came to be,

not in mere hue but showing forth pure light.

43 Call as I might on training, art or wit,

no words of mine could make the image seen.

Belief, though, may conceive it, eyes still long.

46 In us, imagination is too mean

for such great heights. And that’s no miracle.

For no eye ever went beyond the sun.

49 So shining there was that fourth family

that’s always fed by one exalted Sire

with sight of what He breathes, what Son He has.

52 And now, ‘Give thanks,’ Beatrice began.

‘Give thanks to the Him, the Sun of all the angels.

In grace, He’s raised you to this sun of sense.’

55 No mortal heart was ever so well fed

to give itself devoutly to its God

so swiftly, with such gratitude and joy,

58 as now, to hear her words ring, I became.

I set my love so wholly on that Sun

that He, in oblivion, eclipsed even Beatrice.

61 This did not trouble her. She smiled at it.

And brightness from the laughter in her eyes

shared out to many things my one whole mind.

64 Bright beyond seeing, I saw, now, many flares

make us their centre and themselves our crown,

still sweeter even in voice than radiance.

67* Sometimes, in that same way,

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