Love That Moves the Sun and Other Stars

by Dante Alighieri

  are not too few – that you should free this man

  from all the clouds of his mortality,

  so highest happiness be shown to him.

  Our Queen, to you, who may do what you will,

  I also pray you keep him (he has seen

  so much!) healthy in all his heart intends.

  Watch, and defeat the impulses of man.

  See! Beatrice with so many saints

  closes her hands in prayers along with mine.’

  The eyes – which God both loves and venerates –

  attentive to these orisons, made clear

  how welcome to her were these holy prayers

  and then turned straight to the eternal light

  in which (we’re bound to think) no creature’s eye

  inwardly travels with such clarity.

  And drawing nearer, as I had to now,

  the end of all desires, in my own self

  I ended all the ardour of desire.

  Now Bernard, smiling, made a sign to me

  that I look up. Already, though, I was,

  by my own will, as he desired I be.

  My sight, becoming pure and wholly free,

  entered still more, then more, along the ray

  of that one light which, of itself, is true.

  Seeing, henceforward, was far more than speech –

  yielding before the sight I saw – can show.

  Mind’s memory yields, outraged at that beyond.

  Like those who see so clearly while they dream

  that marks of feeling, when their dreaming ends,

  remain, though nothing more returns to mind,

  so I am now. For nearly all I saw

  has gone, even if, still, within my heart,

  there drops the sweetness that was born from that.

  So, too, in sunlight, snow will lose its seal.

  So, too, the oracles the Sibyl wrote

  on weightless leaves are lost upon the wind.

  You raise yourself so far, O highest light,

  above our dying thoughts! Now lend once more

  some little part of what it seemed you were,

  and make my tongue sufficient in its powers

  that it may leave at least one telling spark

  of all your glory to a future race.

  Returning somewhat to my memory,

  re-echoing a little in my verse,

  your triumph over all will be more known.

  As I believe, the sharp light I sustained

  in that live ray was such that, if I’d turned

  away, eyes blurring, I’d have lost my track.

  And therefore (I remember this) I grew

  the braver as I bore that light, and joined

  the look I had to that unending might.

  Grace, in all plenitude, you dared me set

  my seeing eyes on that eternal light

  so that all seeing there achieved its end.

  Within in its depths, this light, I saw, contained,

  bound up and gathered in a single book,

  the leaves that scatter through the universe –

  beings and accidents and modes of life,

  as though blown all together in a way

  that what I say is just a simple light.

  This knotting-up of universal form

  I saw, I’m sure of that. For now I feel,

  in saying this, a gift of greater joy.

  One single point in trauma is far more,

  for me, than those millennia since sail

  made Neptune marvel under Argos-shade.

  And so my mind, held high above itself,

  looked on, intent and still, in wondering awe

  and, lit by wonder, always flared anew.

  We all become, as that light strikes us, such

  we cannot (this would be impossible)

  consent to turn and seek some other face.

  For good – the only object of our will –

  is gathered up entire in that one light.

  Outside it, all is flawed that’s perfect there.

  And now my spark of words will come more short –

  even of what I still can call to mind –

  than baby tongues still bathing in mum’s milk.

  But not because that living light on which,

  in wonder, I now fixed my eyes showed more

  than always as before and one sole sight.

  Rather, as sight in me, yet looking on,

  grew finer still, one single showing-forth

  (me, changing mutely) laboured me more near.

  Within the being – lucid, bright and deep –

  of that high brilliance, there appeared to me

  three circling spheres, three-coloured, one in span.

  And one, it seemed, was mirrored by the next

  twin rainbows, arc to arc. The third seemed fire,

  and breathed to first and second equally.

  How short mere speaking falls, how faint against

  my own idea. And this idea, compared

  to what I saw … well, ‘little’ hardly squares.

  Eternal light, you sojourn in yourself alone.

  Alone, you know yourself. Known to yourself,

  you, knowing, love and smile on your own being.

  An inter-circulation, thus conceived,

  appears in you like mirrored brilliancy.

  But when a while my eyes had looked this round,

  deep in itself, it seemed – as painted now,

  in those same hues – to show our human form.

  At which, my sight was set entirely there.

  As some geometer may fix his mind

  to find a circle-area, yet lack,

  in thought, the principle his thoughts require,

  likewise with me at this sight seen so new.

  I willed myself to see what fit there was,

  image to circle, and how this all in-where’d.

  But mine were wings that could not rise to that,

  save that, with this, my mind, was stricken through

  by sudden lightning bringing what it wished.

  All powers of high imagining here failed.

  But now my will and my desire were turned,

  as wheels that move in equilibrium,

  by love that moves the sun and other stars.

  BOCCACCIO · Mrs Rosie and the Priest

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS · As kingfishers catch fire

  The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue

  THOMAS DE QUINCEY · On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts

  FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE · Aphorisms on Love and Hate

  JOHN RUSKIN · Traffic

  PU SONGLING · Wailing Ghosts

  JONATHAN SWIFT · A Modest Proposal

  Three Tang Dynasty Poets

  WALT WHITMAN · On the Beach at Night Alone

  KENKŌ · A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees

  BALTASAR GRACIÁN · How to Use Your Enemies

  JOHN KEATS · The Eve of St Agnes

  THOMAS HARDY · Woman much missed

  GUY DE MAUPASSANT · Femme Fatale

  MARCO POLO · Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls

  SUETONIUS · Caligula

  APOLLONIUS OF RHODES · Jason and Medea

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON · Olalla

  KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS · The Communist Manifesto

  PETRONIUS · Trimalchio’s Feast

  JOHANN PETER HEBEL · How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher’s Dog

  HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN · The Tinder Box

  RUDYARD KIPLING · The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows

  DANTE · Circles of Hell

  HENRY MAYHEW · Of Street Piemen

  HAFEZ · The nightingales are drunk

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER · The Wife of Bath

  MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE · How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing

  THOMAS NASHE · The Terrors of the Night

&nbs
p; EDGAR ALLAN POE · The Tell-Tale Heart

  MARY KINGSLEY · A Hippo Banquet

  JANE AUSTEN · The Beautifull Cassandra

  ANTON CHEKHOV · Gooseberries

  SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE · Well, they are gone, and here must I remain

  JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE · Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings

  CHARLES DICKENS · The Great Winglebury Duel

  HERMAN MELVILLE · The Maldive Shark

  ELIZABETH GASKELL · The Old Nurse’s Story

  NIKOLAY LESKOV · The Steel Flea

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC · The Atheist’s Mass

  CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN · The Yellow Wall-Paper

  C. P. CAVAFY · Remember, Body …

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY · The Meek One

  GUSTAVE FLAUBERT · A Simple Heart

  NIKOLAI GOGOL · The Nose

  SAMUEL PEPYS · The Great Fire of London

  EDITH WHARTON · The Reckoning

  HENRY JAMES · The Figure in the Carpet

  WILFRED OWEN · Anthem For Doomed Youth

  WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART · My Dearest Father

  PLATO · Socrates’ Defence

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI · Goblin Market

  Sindbad the Sailor

  SOPHOCLES · Antigone

  RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA · The Life of a Stupid Man

  LEO TOLSTOY · How Much Land Does A Man Need?

  GIORGIO VASARI · Leonardo da Vinci

  OSCAR WILDE · Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime

  SHEN FU · The Old Man of the Moon

  AESOP · The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon

  MATSUO BASHō · Lips too Chilled

  EMILY BRONTË · The Night is Darkening Round Me

  JOSEPH CONRAD · To-morrow

  RICHARD HAKLUYT · The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe

  KATE CHOPIN · A Pair of Silk Stockings

  CHARLES DARWIN · It was snowing butterflies

  BROTHERS GRIMM · The Robber Bridegroom

  CATULLUS · I Hate and I Love

  HOMER · Circe and the Cyclops

  D. H. LAWRENCE · Il Duro

  KATHERINE MANSFIELD · Miss Brill

  OVID · The Fall of Icarus

  SAPPHO · Come Close

  IVAN TURGENEV · Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands

  VIRGIL · O Cruel Alexis

  H. G. WELLS · A Slip under the Microscope

  HERODOTUS · The Madness of Cambyses

  Speaking of Siva

  The Dhammapada

  JANE AUSTEN · Lady Susan

  JEAN-JACQUES ROSSEAU · The Body Politic

  JEAN DE LA FONTAINE · The World is Full of Foolish Men

  H. G. WELLS · The Sea Raiders

  LIVY · Hannibal

  CHARLES DICKENS · To Be Read at Dusk

  LEO TOLSTOY · The Death of Ivan Ilyich

  MARK TWAIN · The Stolen White Elephant

  WILLIAM BLAKE · Tyger, Tyger

  SHERIDAN LE FANU · Green Tea

  The Yellow Book

  OLAUDAH EQUIANO · Kidnapped

  EDGAR ALLAN POE · A Modern Detective

  The Suffragettes

  MARGERY KEMPE · How To Be a Medieval Woman

  JOSEPH CONRAD · Typhoon

  GIACOMO CASANOVA · The Nun of Murano

  W. B. YEATS · A terrible beauty is born

  THOMAS HARDY · The Withered Arm

  EDWARD LEAR · Nonsense

  ARISTOPHANES · The Frogs

  FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE · Why I Am so Clever

  RAINER MARIA RILKE · Letters to a Young Poet

  LEONID ANDREYEV · Seven Hanged

  APHRA BEHN · Oroonoko

  LEWIS CARROLL · O frabjous day!

  JOHN GAY · Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London

  E. T. A. HOFFMANN · The Sandman

  DANTE · Love that moves the sun and other stars

  ALEXANDER PUSHKIN · The Queen of Spades

  ANTON CHEKHOV · A Nervous Breakdown

  KAKUZO OKAKURA · The Book of Tea

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE · Is this a dagger which I see before me?

  EMILY DICKINSON · My life had stood a loaded gun

  LONGUS · Daphnis and Chloe

  MARY SHELLEY · Matilda

  GEORGE ELIOT · The Lifted Veil

  FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY · White Nights

  OSCAR WILDE · Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast

  VIRGINIA WOOLF · Flush

  ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE · Lot No. 249

  The Rule of Benedict

  WASHINGTON IRVING · Rip Van Winkle

  Anecdotes of the Cynics

  VICTOR HUGO · Waterloo

  CHARLOTTE BRONTË · Stancliffe’s Hotel

  littleblackclassics.com

  THE BEGINNING

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  Penguin Classics is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  This selection first published in Penguin Classics 2016

  Translation copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2007

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-241-25043-3