Paradiso: Canto XXVI

St. John examines Dante concerning Love.—Dante's sight restored.—Adam appears, and answers questions put to him by Dante.

While I was apprehensive because of my quenched sight, a breath which made me attentive issued from the effulgent flame that quenched it, saying, “While thou art regaining the sense of sight which thou hast consumed on me, it is well that thou make up for it by discourse. Begin then, and tell whereto thy soul is aimed, and make thy reckoning that sight is in thee bewildered and not dead; because the Lady who conducts thee through this divine region has in her look the virtue which the band of Ananias had.” I said, “According to her pleasure, or soon or late, let the cure come to the eyes which were gates when she entered with the fire wherewith I ever burn! The Good which makes this court content is Alpha and Omega of whatsoever writing Love reads to me, either low or loud.” That same voice which had taken from me fear of the sudden dazzling, laid on me the charge to speak further, and said, “Surely with a finer sieve it behoves thee to clarify; it behoves thee to tell who directed thy bow to such a target.” And I, “By philosophic arguments and by authority that hence descends, such love must needs be impressed on me; for the good, so far as it is good, in proportion as it is understood, kindles love; and so much the greater as the more of goodness it includes within itself. Therefore, to the Essence (wherein is such supremacy that every good which is found outside of It is naught else than a beam of Its own radiance), more than to any other, the mind of every one who discerns the truth on which this argument is founded must needs be moved in love. Such truth to my intelligence he makes plain, who demonstrates to me the first love of all the sempiternal substances. The voice of the true Author makes it plain who, speaking of Himself, says to Moses, 'I will make thee see all goodness.' Thou, too, makest it plain to me, beginning the lofty proclamation which there below, above all other trump, declares the secret of this place on high.” And I heard, “By human understanding, and by authorities concordant with it, thy sovran love looks unto God; but say, further, if thou feelest other cords draw thee towards Him, so that thou mayest declare with how many teeth this love bites thee.”

The holy intention of the Eagle of Christ was not latent to me; nay, rather I perceived whither he wished to lead my profession; therefore, I began again: “All those bitings which can make the heart turn to God have been concurrent unto my charity; for the existence of the world, and my own existence, the death that He endured that I may live, and that which all the faithful hope even as I do, together with the aforesaid living knowledge, have drawn me from the sea of perverted love, and have set me on the shore of the right. The leaves, wherewith all the garden of the Eternal Gardener is enleaved, I love in proportion as good is borne unto them from Him.”

Soon as I was silent a most sweet song resounded through the heavens, and my Lady said with the rest, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

And as at a keen light sleep is broken by the spirit of sight, which runs to the splendor that goes from coat to coat, and he who awakes shrinks from what he sees, so confused is his sudden wakening, until his judgment comes to his aid; thus Beatrice chased away every mote from my eyes with the radiance of her own, which were resplendent more than a thousand miles; so that I then saw better than before; and, as it were amazed, I asked about a fourth light which I saw with us. And my Lady, “Within those rays the first soul which the First Power ever created gazes with joy upon its creator.”

As the bough that bends its top at passing of the wind, and then lifts itself by its own virtue which raises it, so did I, in amazement, the while she was speaking; and then a desire to speak, wherewith I was burning, gave me again assurance, and I began, “O Apple, that alone wast produced mature, O ancient Father, to whom every bride is daughter and daughter-in-law, devoutly as I can, I supplicate thee that thou speak to me; thou seest my wish, and in order to hear thee quickly, I do not tell it.”

Sometimes an animal, which is covered up, so stirs, that his desire must needs become apparent through the corresponding movement which that which wraps him makes; and in like manner the first soul made evident to me, through its covering, how gladly it came to do me pleasure. Then it breathed, “Without its being uttered to me by thee, I better discern thy wish, than thou whatever thing is most certain to thee; because I see it in the truthful mirror which makes of Itself a likeness of other tbings, while nothing makes for It a likeness of Itself. Thou wouldst hear how long it is since God placed me in the lofty garden where this Lady disposed thee for so long a stairway; and how long it was a delight to my eyes; and the proper cause of the great wrath; and the idiom which I used and which I made. Now, my son, the tasting of the tree was not by itself the cause of so long an exile, but only the overpassing of the bound. There whence thy Lady moved Virgil, I longed for this assembly during four thousand three hundred and two revolutions of the sun; and while I was on earth I saw him return to all the lights of his path nine hundred and thirty times. The tongue which I spoke was all extinct long before the people of Nimrod attempted their unaccomplishable work; for never was any product of the reason (because of human liking, which alters, following the heavens) durable for ever. A natural action it is for man to speak; but, thus or thus, nature then leaves for you to do according as it pleases you. Before I descended to the infernal anguish, the Supreme Good, whence comes the gladness that swathes me, was on earth called I; EL it was called afterwards; and that must needs be, for the custom of mortals is as a leaf on a branch, which goes away and another comes. On the mountain which rises highest from the wave I was, with pure life and sinful, from the first hour to that which, when the sun changes quadrant, follows the sixth hour.”