The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

As goats on a rocky hill will dance and leap,

  nimble and gay, till they find grass, and then,

  while they are grazing, grow as tame as sheep

  at ease in the green shade when the sun is high

  and the shepherd stands by, leaning on his staff,

  and at his ease covers them with his eye—

  and as the herdsman beds down on the ground,

  keeping his quiet night watch by his flock

  lest it be scattered by a wolf or hound;

  just so we lay there, each on his stone block,

  I as the goat, they as my guardians,

  shut in on either side by walls of rock.

  I could see little ahead—rock blocked the way—

  but through that little I saw the stars grow larger,

  brighter than mankind sees them. And as I lay,

  staring and lost in thought, a sleep came on me—

  the sleep that oftentimes presents the fact

  before the event, a sleep of prophecy.

  At the hour, I think, when Venus, first returning

  out of the east, shone down upon the mountain—

  she who with fires of love comes ever-burning—

  I dreamed I saw a maiden innocent

  and beautiful, who walked a sunny field

  gathering flowers, and caroling as she went:

  “Say I am Leah if any ask my name,

  and my white hands weave garlands wreath on wreath

  to please me when I stand before the frame

  of my bright glass. For this my fingers play

  among these blooms. But my sweet sister Rachel

  sits at her mirror motionless all day.

  To stare into her own eyes endlessly

  is all her joy, as mine is in my weaving.

  She looks, I do. Thus live we joyously.”

  Now eastward the new day rayed Heaven’s dome

  (the sweeter to the returning wanderer

  who wakes from each night’s lodging nearer home),

  and the shadows fled on every side as I

  stirred from my sleep and leaped upon my feet,

  seeing my Lords already standing by.

  “This is the day your hungry soul shall be

  fed on the golden apples men have sought

  on many different boughs so ardently.”

  These were the very words which, at the start,

  my Virgil spoke to me, and there have never

  been gifts as dear as these were to my heart.

  Such waves of yearning to achieve the height

  swept through my soul, that at each step I took

  I felt my feathers growing for the flight.

  When we had climbed the stairway to the rise

  of the topmost step, there with a father’s love

  Virgil turned and fixed me with his eyes.

  “My son,” he said, “you now have seen the torment

  of the temporal and the eternal fires;

  here, now, is the limit of my discernment.

  I have led you here by grace of mind and art;

  now let your own good pleasure be your guide;

  you are past the steep ways, past the narrow part.

  See there the sun that shines upon your brow,

  the sweet new grass, the flowers, the fruited vines

  which spring up without need of seed or plow.

  Until those eyes come gladdened which in pain

  moved me to come to you and lead your way,

  sit there at ease or wander through the plain.

  Expect no more of me in word or deed:

  here your will is upright, free, and whole,

  and you would be in error not to heed

  whatever your own impulse prompts you to:

  lord of yourself I crown and mitre you.”

  NOTES

  1-4. As the day stands: Meaning of this passage: It is shortly before sunset of the third day on the Mountain. Dante’s details here are the reverse of those given at the opening of II, which see. the land where his Maker’s blood was shed: Jerusalem. the Ebro: For Spain.

  6. God’s glad Angel: The Angel of Chastity. He is standing on the narrow rocky path outside the wall of fire.

  8. Beati mundo corde: “Blessed are the pure in heart [for they shall see God].” (Matthew, v, 8.)

  10-12. THE WALL OF FLAMES. It is, of course, the fire in which the Lustful are purified. It is also the legendary wall of fire that surrounded the Earthly Paradise. Note that all souls must pass through that fire. The readiest interpretation of that fact is that every soul must endure some purification before it can approach God (theoretically, a soul could climb Purgatory and endure no pain but this). Since no man’s soul is perfect in its love, moreover, it must endure the fire that purifies impure love. Additionally, the allegorical intent may be that no man is entirely free of Lust. Having reached the Earthly Paradise, the soul has reached the Perfection of the Active Life. Below, its motion has been toward perfection. Now, after a few final rituals, the soul becomes perfect, and therefore changeless.

  16. I lean forward over my clasped hands: Dante’s hands must be clasped a bit below the waist. It is an odd posture, but it is also oddly Dantean.

  17-18. bodies I once saw burned: Dante must mean as a witness at an execution. Burnings at the stake generally took place in public squares. They were a rather common spectacle. Dante’s sentence of exile, it is relevant to note, decreed that he was to be burned if taken on Florentine territory.

  23. Geryon: The Monster of Fraud. See Inferno, XVII, 1 ff., note.

  37-39. Pyramus . . . Thisbe: Famous tragic lovers of Babylon. Ovid (Metamorphoses, IV, 55-166) tells their story. At a tryst by a mulberry (which in those days bore white fruit) Thisbe was frightened by a lion and ran off, dropping her veil. The lion, his jaws bloody from a recent kill, tore at the veil, staining it with blood. Pyramus, arriving later, saw the stained veil, concluded that Thisbe was dead, and stabbed himself. Thisbe, returning, found him and cried to him to open his eyes for his Thisbe. At that name Pyramus opened his eyes, looked at her, and died. Thisbe, invoking the tree to darken in their memory, thereupon stabbed herself. (Cf. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.) The mulberry roots drank their blood and the fruit turned red ever after.

  40. my hard paralysis melted: Note how Dante describes his emotions throughout this passage. He is afraid, to be sure. But the fear is of his human body and habit. His soul yearns forward, but his body will not obey until Reason has overcome mortal habit.

  58. a light: This is the Angel Guardian of the Earthly Paradise. He corresponds to the Angel guarding the Gate. At every other ascent in Purgatory, Dante has met one angel. Here, he meets two, one on either side of the fire. It is the song of this Angel that has guided the Poets through the flames. In all probability, too, it is this Angel that strikes away the final P from Dante’s brow (or perhaps it was consumed in the fire). It is unlikely that the final P was removed by the Angel of Chastity, since the Poets had not yet been through the fire, i.e., had not really crossed all of the Cornice.

  60. Venite benedicti patris mei: “Come ye blessèd of my Father.” (Matthew, xxv, 34.)

  68. my shadow: Virgil and Statius, of course, cast none.

  94. At the hour . . . when Venus, first returning: Venus is in the sign of Pisces, which immediately precedes Aries, in which sign the sun now is. It is, therefore, Venus Morningstar. Thus it is the hour before dawn, in which the truth is dreamed.

  97-108. DANTE’S DREAM. Leah and Rachel were, respectively, the first- and second-born daughters of Laban and the first and second wives of Jacob. Many authors before Dante had interpreted them as representing the Active and the Contemplative Life of the Soul. Leah’s white hands (le belle mani) symbolize the Active Life, as Rachel’s eyes (lines 104-108) symbolize the Contemplative Life.

  Since it is the truth Dante is dreaming, these figures must foreshadow others, as the eagle of his earlier dream (IX, 19 ff.) represented Lucia.
Thus Leah prefigures Matilda, who will appear soon, and Rachel prefigures Beatrice, who will appear soon thereafter. But just as the eagle is not to be confused with Lucia, so Leah and Rachel are not to be narrowly identified with Matilda and Beatrice except as allegorical dream equivalents, for Matilda and Beatrice may very well be taken, as part of their total allegory, to represent the Active and the Contemplative Life of the Soul.

  127 ff. “My son,” he said: These are Virgil’s last words, for the Poets have now reached the extreme limit of Reason’s (and Art’s) competence. Virgil continues awhile with Dante into the Earthly Paradise (walking, one should note, behind rather than ahead of Dante) but he has no more to say. A little later in fact (XXIX, 55-57) when Dante turns to Virgil out of old habit as if for an explanation of the strange and marvelous sights he comes on, he receives in answer only a look as full of awe as his own. And later yet (XXX, 43 ff.), when Dante turns from Beatrice to look for him, Virgil has vanished.

  For Virgil has now performed all that he had promised at their first meeting (Inferno, I, 88 ff.), and Dante’s soul is now free to obey its every impulse, for it now contains nothing but Good.

  143. I crown and mitre you: Crown as king of your physical self and mitre (as a bishop) as lord of your soul. Dante has not, by much, achieved the full lordship of his soul, but he has achieved as much as Virgil (Reason) can confer upon him. A bishop’s mitre, though it confers great authority, does not confer final authority. And a king, for that matter, may still be subject to an emperor, as he certainly would be, in Dante’s view, to God.

  Canto XXVIII

  THE EARTHLY PARADISE

  Lethe

  It is the morning of the Wednesday after Easter, Dante’s fourth day on the Mountain, and having been crowned Lord of Himself by Virgil, Dante now takes the lead for the first time, wandering at his leisure into THE SACRED WOOD of the Earthly Paradise until his way is blocked by the waters of LETHE.

  His feet stopped, Dante sends his eyes on to wander that Wood and there suddenly appears to him a solitary lady singing and gathering flowers. She is MATILDA, who symbolizes THE ACTIVE LIFE OF THE SOUL.

  In reply to Dante’s entreaty, Matilda approaches to the other bank of the river. So standing, three paces across from him, she offers to answer all that Dante wishes to ask. Dante replies that he is in some confusion about the sources of the wind and the water of the Earthly Paradise. Matilda promises to dispel the mists from his understanding and proceeds to explain in great detail THE NATURAL PHENOMENA OF THE EARTHLY PARADISE, which is to say, the source of the wind, the vegetation, and the water. She further explains the special powers of the waters of LETHE and of EUNOË and concludes with some remarks on the errors of the ancient poets in the location of the Earthly Paradise. At her last words, Dante turns to his two ancient poets to see how they are taking her remarks. Finding them smiling, he turns back once more to Matilda.

  Eager now to explore in and about

  the luxuriant holy forest evergreen

  that softened the new light, I started out,

  without delaying longer, from the stair

  and took my lingering way into the plain

  on ground that breathed a fragrance to the air.

  With no least variation in itself

  and with no greater force than a mild wind,

  the sweet air stroked my face on that sweet shelf,

  and at its touch the trembling branches swayed,

  all bending toward that quarter into which

  the holy mountain cast its morning shade;

  yet not so far back that in any part

  of that sweet wood the small birds in the tops

  had reason to stop practicing their art;

  but bursting with delight those singing throngs

  within their green tents welcomed the new breeze

  that murmured a sweet burden to their songs

  like that one hears gathering from bough to bough

  of the pine wood there on Chiassi’s shore

  when Aeolus lets the Sirocco blow.

  I had already come, slow bit by bit,

  so far into that ancient holy wood

  I could not see where I had entered it;

  when I came upon a stream that blocked my way.

  To my left it flowed, its wavelets bending back

  the grasses on its banks as if in play.

  The purest waters known to man would seem

  to have some taint of sediment within them

  compared to those, for though that holy stream

  flows darkly there, its surface never lit

  in its perpetual shade by any shaft

  of sun or moon, nothing could hide in it.

  My feet stopped, but my eyes pursued their way

  across that stream, to wander in delight

  the variousness of everblooming May.

  And suddenly—as rare sights sometimes do,

  the wonder of them driving from the mind

  all other thoughts—I saw come into view

  a lady, all alone, who wandered there

  singing, and picking flowers from the profusion

  with which her path was painted everywhere.

  “Fair lady who—if outward looks and ways

  bear, as they ought, true witness to the heart—

  have surely sunned yourself in Love’s own rays,

  be pleased,” I said to her, “to draw as near

  the bank of this sweet river as need be

  for me to understand the song I hear.

  You make me see in my imagining

  Persephone as she appeared that day

  her mother lost a daughter; she, the Spring.”

  As a dancer, keeping both feet on the ground

  and close together, hardly putting one

  before the other, spins herself around—

  so did she turn to me upon the red

  and yellow flowerlets, virgin modesty

  making her lower her eyes and bow her head.

  And she did all I asked, for she came forward

  till I not only heard the melody

  of what she sang, but made out every word.

  And when she stood where the bright grasses are

  bathed and bent by the waves of the clear river,

  she raised her eyes—and gave my soul a star.

  I cannot think so glorious a ray

  shot out of Venus’ eyes that time her son

  wounded her inadvertently in play.

  There, on the other bank, smiling she stood

  and gathered to her arms more of the flowers

  that sprang up without seeds in that high wood.

  The stream between us was three paces wide,

  but the Hellespont where Persian Xerxes crossed

  to leave a dire example to all pride,

  in its raging between Sestos and Abydos,

  caused less hate in Leander than this in me,

  for not dividing so that I might cross.

  “You are newcomers, and perhaps you find

  because I smile,” she said, “here in this place

  chosen to be the nest of humankind,

  some doubt that makes you wonder at the sight.

  To pierce such mists as gather on your thoughts

  the psalm, Delectasti me, will give you light.

  And you in front who first entreated me,

  speak if you would know more. I came prepared

  to answer you as fully as need be.”

  “The way the wood hums and the waters flow,”

  I said then, “are at odds with the conclusions

  I drew from what I heard a while ago.”

  “I shall explain from what cause,” she replied,

  “these things that have confused your mind proceed,

  and thus brush its obscuring mist aside.

  That Highest Good which only Itself can please

  made man good, and for goodness, and It gave him

  this plac
e as earnest of eternal peace.

  But man defaulted. All too brief his stay.

  Defaulted, and exchanged for tears and toil

  his innocent first laughter and sweet play.

  When vapors of the earth and water meet

  a storm is born, below there. Now these vapors

  reach up, as far as possible, toward heat.