Like as a lark that in the air expatiates, First singing and then silent with content Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her, Such seemed to me the image of the imprint Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will Doth everything become the thing it is.
And notwithstanding to my doubt I was As glass is to the colour that invests it, To wait the time in silence it endured not, But forth from out my mouth, "What things are these?"
Extorted with the force of its own weight;
Whereat I saw great joy of coruscation.
Thereafterward with eye still more enkindled The blessed standard made to me reply, To keep me not in wonderment suspended:
"I see that thou believest in these things Because I say them, but thou seest not how;
So that, although believed in, they are hidden.
Thou doest as he doth who a thing by name Well apprehendeth, but its quiddity Cannot perceive, unless another show it.
'Regnum coelorum' suffereth violence From fervent love, and from that living hope That overcometh the Divine volition;
Not in the guise that man o'ercometh man, But conquers it because it will be conquered, And conquered conquers by benignity.
The first life of the eyebrow and the fifth Cause thee astonishment, because with them Thou seest the region of the angels painted.
They passed not from their bodies, as thou thinkest, Gentiles, but Christians in the steadfast faith Of feet that were to suffer and had suffered.
For one from Hell, where no one e'er turns back Unto good will, returned unto his bones, And that of living hope was the reward,--Of living hope, that placed its efficacy In prayers to God made to resuscitate him, So that 'twere possible to move his will.
The glorious soul concerning which I speak, Returning to the flesh, where brief its stay, Believed in Him who had the power to aid it;
And, in believing, kindled to such fire Of genuine love, that at the second death Worthy it was to come unto this joy.
The other one, through grace, that from so deep A fountain wells that never hath the eye Of any creature reached its primal wave, Set all his love below on righteousness;
Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose His eye to our redemption yet to be, Whence he believed therein, and suffered not From that day forth the stench of pagani**, And he reproved therefor the folk perverse.
Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism More than a thousand years before baptizing.
O thou predestination, how remote Thy root is from the aspect of all those Who the First Cause do not behold entire!
And you, O mortals! hold yourselves restrained In judging; for ourselves, who look on God, We do not know as yet all the elect;
And sweet to us is such a deprivation, Because our good in this good is made perfect, That whatsoe'er God wills, we also will."
After this manner by that shape divine, To make clear in me my short-sightedness, Was given to me a pleasant medicine;
And as good singer a good lutanist Accompanies with vibrations of the chords, Whereby more pleasantness the song acquires, So, while it spake, do I remember me That I beheld both of those blessed lights, Even as the winking of the eyes concords, Moving unto the words their little flames.
