Paradiso
Canto XXII
The thunderous cry which had so dismayed the poet is, Beatrice tells him, the expression of Heaven’s wrath at the corruption just described, and a prayer for its punishment.
Dante is addressed by St. Benedict, who tells of his founding of the monastery on Monte Cassino, after he had driven out the pagan worship; and then bewails and condemns the corruption of the monks of the Order he had founded. When the Saint has disappeared among his companions, the poet and his conductress are snatched up into the eighth heaven, that of the Fixed Stars: thence Dante, at Beatrice’s command, looks back over all the way he had come from the earth, and the system of the seven spheres. He smiles to see how insignificant appears the earth from such a height.
I TURNED, numbed with amazement, to my Guide
For comfort, as a little child who runs,
As always, there where it can most confide;
And as a mother succoureth her son’s
Pale cheeks and panting breath and forehead hot
With her own voice, that reassures at once,
She said: “Thou art in Heaven, know’st thou it not?
And know’st thou not, Heaven is all holiness,
And what is done here from good zeal is wrought?
How the song would have changed thee, thou canst guess, [10]
And (had I not refrained) by smiling I,
Seeing that this shout puts thee in such distress.
If thou had’st caught the prayers within the cry,
Already would the chastisement appear
Disclosed, which thou shalt witness ere thou die.
The sword cuts not in haste which smites from here
On high, nor tarrieth, save as those conceive
Who wait for it in longing or in fear.
But turn to the others; now may’st thou perceive
Many illustrious spirits, if thou raise [20]
Thine eyes and lead them where I give thee leave.”
As was her pleasure, I lifted up my gaze,
And saw a hundred little spheres collect
And grow more beautiful with mutual rays.
I stood as one who in himself hath checked
The pricking of desire, nor makes him bold
To speak, from fearing too much to expect,
And the most large and luminous to behold
Of all those pearls advanced to solace me
With what I craved might of itself be told. [30]
I heard then from within it: “Didst thou see,
As I, what loving-kindness burns in us,
Thy thoughts had been expressed in utterance free.
But lest by waiting thou a moment lose
On the high journey, my word but replies
To the thought that found thy tongue so scrupulous.
That mountain on whose slope Cassino lies[i]37-39. St. Benedict in 528 erected two chapels in a temple of Apollo, and converted the heathen.
Was once frequented on its top by folk
Obdurate in their dark idolatries.
And I am he who first bore up that rock [40]
The name of Him who brought down among men
The truth which lifteth us, on high to look.
Grace so abundant overshone me then
That I reclaimed the villages about
From the impious worship’s world-seducing reign.
These others, all contemplatives at root,
Were quickened by that warm enkindling fire
Which giveth birth to holy flower and fruit.
Here is Macarius, here Romualdus, here[ii]49. St. Macarius of Alexandria and St. Romualdus of Ravenna.
My brothers, who refrained their feet and stayed [50]
Within the cloister and kept their hearts entire.”
And I: “The affection which thou hast displayed,
Speaking with me, and the benign intent
Which by your glowing you have each conveyed
Dilate me and make me newly confident
As when the sun the rose encourages
To open to the utmost of its bent.
Wherefore I pray thee, Father, assure me this,
That of thy grace I may be favoured so
That thou unveil thy likeness as it is.” [60]
Then he: “Brother, thy high desire to know
Shall in the last sphere its fulfilment win
Where the others are fulfilled, and mine also.
There perfected and ripe and whole within
Is each desire; and there, and there alone,
Is every part as it hath ever been.
For it is not in space; poles it hath none;
And mounting to it reaches up our stair;
For this cause is it from thy sight withdrawn.
Jacob the patriarch far up even to there [70]
Was given to see its upper part extend,
And in his vision troops of angels bear;
But on it none now lifteth foot to ascend
From low earth: and on earth remaineth still
My Rule, a waste of parchments without end.
Walls that were once an abbey now conceal
A den of thieves, and every monkish hood
Is a sack, full to bursting with bad meal.
But taking of hard usury is at feud
Less with God’s pleasure than what maketh fall [80]
Into such greed the monks’ demented brood;
For whatsoever the Church holds is all
For the poor people who God’s name invoke,
Nor for one’s kin, nor some yet viler soul.
So frail the flesh is among mortal folk
That good beginning lasts not on to mould
The acorn from the seedling of the oak.
Peter began with neither silver nor gold,
And I with prayer and fast gathered my band,
And Francis his with humbleness enrolled. [90]
And if in its beginning each be scanned,
And if thou scrutinise what things deprave,
Thou wilt behold black where the white was planned.
Yet Jordan turned-back and the fleeing wave
God willed, were marvel of a mightier kind
Than here were the recovery that should save.”
So saying, into his company behind
He merged; the company close round him came;
Then all were swept up like a whirl of wind.
And the sweet Lady urged me after them, [100]
With a sign only, up that stair to spring;
Her power my earthiness so overcame.
Now here, where up and down our motioning
Is nature’s work, was ever motion guessed
To match the sudden swiftness of my wing.
So may I, Reader, to that triumph blest
Return, for sake of which my weight of sin
I wail, and often beat upon my breast,
Thou had’st not quicker plucked out and thrust in
The fire thy finger, than I saw the sign [110][iii]110-111. “The sign”: Gemini (the Twins). Dante has risen to the heaven of the fixed stars.
Which follows next the Bull, and stood therein.
O glorious stars! Light pregnant with divine
Virtue, which I in recognition thank[iv]113. “Which I in recognition thank”: Gemini, the house of Mercury, bestows a taste for learning.
For whatsoever genius is mine,
With you he mounted and with you he sank,[v]115. The sun was rising with Gemini when Dante was born.
The father to whom mortal life is owed,
When first the air of Tuscany I drank.
And then, when favour was on me bestowed
To enter the great wheel which turns your skies,
Your region was appointed my abode. [120]
To you devoutly now my spirit sighs[vi]121. Dante invokes the aid of his native constellation.
To acquire virtue for the trial hard
Which draws me on to essay that enterprise.
“Thou draw’st so near to the ultimate reward,”
Said Beatrice, “that nothing should remit
Thine eyes’ intense and undisturbed regard;
And therefore, ere thou further enter it,
Look down and see how great the world’s extent
Which I already have set beneath thy feet,
So that thy heart may all it can present [130]
Of joy unto the joyous throng that nears
In triumph through the rounded firmament.”
My sight through each and all of the seven spheres
Turned back; and seeing this globe there manifest,
I smiled to see how sorry it appears;
And I approve that judgment as the best
Which least accounts it, and that man esteem
Most worthy, who elsewhere brings his thoughts to rest.
I saw the daughter of Latona gleam[vii]139. Diana, the moon.
Without that shade which I had pondered on [140]
And which had made her rare and dense to seem.
The strong love of thy son, Hyperion,[viii]142-146. “Hyperion” is often called the father of the sun.—“Maia”: the mother of Mercury.—“Dione”: the mother of Venus.—“His father and son”: Saturn and Mars.
I there sustained, and saw how in a ring
Maia and Dione close beside him shone.
Next there appeared to me Jove’s tempering
Between his father and son; and I could note
Their places and their station’s varying.
And all the seven were shown me, and I thought:
How swift they are in moving and how great,
And each one from the other how remote! [150]
The small round floor which makes us passionate[ix]151. “The small round floor”: the inhabited part of the earth.
I, carried with the eternal Twins, discerned,
From hill to harbour, plain to contemplate:
Then to the beauteous eyes my eyes returned.