Paradise

Canto OneDante and Beatrice are at the threshold of Heaven. She explains to him that it is the nature of the human soul to rise.The glory of the One who moves all thingspenetrates the universe with light,more radiant in one part and elsewhere less:I have been in that heaven He makes most bright,4and seen things neither mind can hold nor tongueutter, when one descends from such great height,For as we near the One for whom we long,7our intellects so plunge into the deep,memory cannot follow where we go.Nevertheless what small part I can keep10of that holy kingdom treasured in my heartwill now become the matter of my song.O good Apollo, for this last work of art,13make me as fit a vessel of your poweras you demand when you bestow the crownOf the beloved laurel. Till this hour16one peak of twin Parnassus has sufficed,but if I am to enter the lists nowI shall need both. Then surge into my breast19and breathe your song, as when you drew the vainMarsyas from the sheath of his own limbs.Father, virtue divine, should you but deign22that I make manifest a shadow ofthe blessed kingdom sealed upon my brain,At the foot of that tree whose wood you love25you’ll see me stand and crown my brows with green,made worthy by the subject, and by you.Poets and Caesars now so rarely glean28those leaves to celebrate a victory(man’s fault and shame, for our desires are mean),the Peneian branches must give birth to joy31when any man should thirst for their high fame,in the glad heart of the Delphic deity.A little spark gives birth to a great flame.34Better voices perhaps will follow mine,praying to hear what Cyrrha shall proclaim!By various spills of light the sun will shine37dawning upon the world of men that die,but at the three-cross intersection ofFour rings it rises in the company40of a more favorable time of year,happier stars, to stamp this worldly clayWith its most perfect seal. One hemisphere43lay brightening in that stream and one grew dim,as it made morning there and evening here,When I saw Beatrice turn upon her left46and look to Heaven to gaze into the sun:no eagle ever held a gaze so firm.As a reflecting ray will follow upon49the first and in a glance, an instant, risejust like a pilgrim longing to turn home,So she instilled her gazing–through my eyes–52into my powers of fancy, and I toostared at the sun more than our sight can bear.With our weak powers on earth one may not do55what there one may–thanks to the special placecreated as the proper home for man.Not long could I sustain the brilliant rays58before they seemed to flash like sparks that playround steel still white-hot from the forge’s blaze,And suddenly it seemed that day and day61were fused, as if the One who wields the mightadorned the heavens with a second sun.Into the everlasting wheels of light64Beatrice gazed with silent constancy;on her I gazed, far from that central sight.Her countenance had the same effect in me67as did the plant that Glaucus tasted whenit made him share the godhood of the sea.To signify man’s soaring beyond man70words will not do: let my comparisonsuffice for them for whom the grace of GodReserves the experience. If I bore alone73that part of me which you created last,O Love that steers the heavens, you surely know,For your light lifted me. And when the vast76wheel you have made eternal by desireheld me intent to hear the harmonyYou tune in all its parts, the sunlight-fire79lit so much of the sky, no flooding streamor rain could ever fill so broad a lake.The newness of the sound, the swelling gleam82lighted desire in me to learn their cause–keener than any appetite I’d known.And she, who saw within me what I was,85to still the troubled waters of my soul,opened her lips before I could inquire,And thus began: “You’re making your mind dull88with false imagining–you don’t perceivewhat you would see, if you could shake it off.You are not on the earth, as you believe.91Lightning that flees its proper realm is notso swift as your returning to your own.”I admit I was shorn of my first doubt94by the brief words she flashed me with a smile,but in another net my feet were caught:“My first amazement is at peace–but still97I am amazed that I should rise so high,beyond the lightness of the air and fire.”She turned her eyes to me then with a sigh100of pity, as a mother in distresswhose child is ill and talks deliriously,So she made matters plain: “All things possess103order amongst themselves: this order isthe form that makes the world resemble God.Thence the high beings read the signs, the trace106of that eternal Power who is the endfor which the form is set in time and place.All natures in this order lean and tend109each in distinctive manner to its Source,some to approach more near and others less–Whence from their various ports all creatures move112on the great sea of being, with each oneferried by instinct given from above.This is what makes the fire rise toward the moon;115this, the prime mover of the mortal heart;this makes the heavy earth condense in one;Nor does this bow with target-cleaving art118strike only things that lack intelligence,but beings made with intellect and love.The glorious world-ordaining providence121forever stills the highest heaven with light,beyond the spinning of the swiftest sphere,And to that place as to our destined site124we’re speeded by the power of that cordshooting each arrow in its happy flight.Often it’s true a form may not accord127with the intent of him who works the artbecause the matter’s deaf and won’t respond:So, from this course, a creature may depart130if it should have the power, despite the push,to swerve away and veer off from its start,And as you’ll see a fall of lightning flash133from the high clouds, so cheating pleasures skewthat first urge, and they plunge it to the earth.No more amazement should it bring to you136that you ascend, than if a mountain streamshould tumble rushing to the plains below.But it would be a cause of just surprise139if, free of every bar, you should remainlike a still flame on earth, and not arise.”Then to the heavens she turned her gaze again.142