Purgatorio: Canto XXIII

While I mine eyes upon the leafage green
Fixed, with such eager gaze as giveth one,
Whose life in catching birds hath wasted been;

My more than Father said to me: '' My son,
Come now, I pray; what time to us is lent,
We so should spend that better gain be won.

I turned my face, and instantly I went
Close to those Sages, who discoursed so well.
That little effort seemed in walking spent.

And lo! a wailing song upon us fell,
E'en Labia mea Domine in strain
That made our breasts with joy and sorrow swell.

"O my sweet Father, what hear I again?"
So I began, and he: " Those shades that go
Now loose, perchance, the knot of their debt's

And e'en as eager pilgrims often do,
Who when they light midway on folk unknown,
Turn round to them, yet do not linger so.

Thus, behind us, a crowd came running on,
More swift than we, and on us fixed their gaze,
A crowd of souls, in silent prayer each one.

Each with dark dim cavernous eyes did gaze,
Pallid in face, and so exceeding thin.
Their body's surface every bone displays.

I do not think that, when all worn to skin,
E'en Erisichthon showed as half so tanned
By his long fast, when fear was worst within.

I said, as I in thought their features scanned,
"These are the race that lost Jerusalem
When Mary took her son's flesh in her hand."

Seemed their eye-sockets like rings void of gem:
He who in human face doth omo read,
Would here have recognised full clear the M.

Who would have thought an apple's scent could breed —
Not knowing how — such keen and sharp desire,
Or that which from pure water doth proceed.

Still did I what had made them gaunt admire,
Seeking the cause, not yet made manifest.
That with such skin and scales did them attire.

And lo! from out his head's cavernous nest
A spirit turned his eyes and gazed on me,
And then cried out, " With what grace am I blest!"

Ne'er by his face should I have known 'twas he.
But in his voice was that to me revealed
Which in his face outworn I could not see.

That spark in me as with a flash unsealed
My knowledge of the features sorely marred:
Forese's face I knew, no more concealed.

Ah, look not thou at this dry scab and hard,"
So prayed he, "which my countenance doth stain,"
Nor to this flesh so meagre and so scarred;

But tell me true who thou art, who these twain,
Yonder, who here have thee accompanied;
Delay not this in clear speech to explain."

"That face of thine, I wept for when it died,
Gives me no less cause now for sore despair,
Beholding it so altered," I replied.

"But say in God's name, what leaves thee so bare?
Nor bid me speak while wonder holds me still;
Ill can he speak who's filled with other care."

And he to me said, " From the Eternal Will
Falls virtue on the water and the tree
Behind us; hence for me this leanness ill.

This people all, that wail their misery
Through yielding to ungoverned appetite,"
By thirst and hunger holier come to be.

To eat and drink the fragrance doth invite
Which issues from the fruit, and from the spray
That far and wide bedews the verdure bright.

And not once only winding on our way
In this our round, our pain renewed we see.
Pain ' said I: ' consolation ' I should say;

For that same will that leads us to the tree
Made Christ to utter Eli joyously,
When with His blood He made our spirits free."

"Forese, from the day," to him said I,
"Thou left'st the world a better life to win.
Up to this time five years have not rolled by:

If thou had'st lost the power for further sin.
Ere on thee came the hour of that blest woe
Through which we wedlock new with God begin,

How hast thou mounted hither? Surely so
I should have thought to find thee where delay
By equal time repairs itself below."

And he to me: " So quickly here to stay,
To drink the wormwood sweet of this my pain,
My Nella's hot tears sped me on my way.

With her deep sighs and prayer's devoutest strain
She drew me from the region where men wait.
And set me free from circles that detain.

So much more dear to God, more loved the state
Of that my widowed one I loved of yore,
As she in her good deeds is isolate;

For yon Barbagia on Sardinia's shore
Can in her women boast more modesty
Than that Barbagia where my loss she bore.

O brother sweet, what more can I reply?
A time to come already looms in sight
To which this hour shall not seem old, but nigh.

When preachers from the pulpit shall indict
The bold unblushing ladies Florentine,
Who walk with breasts and bosoms bared to light.

What Saracens, or those of barbarous line
E'er stood in need, to make them covered go,
Of spiritual or other discipline?

But if those shameless women could but know
What doom for them the heavens bring by-and- bye.
They with wide mouths e'en now would wail their woe.

For if my foresight looketh not awry.
They will wax sad ere yet the boy has beard
Who now is hushed to sleep with lullaby.

No longer, Brother, be thy name unheard,
See thou that not I only, but we all,
Gaze where through thee the sun hath veiled appeared."

Then I to him: " If thou wilt best recall"'
What thou to me wast, and what I to thee.
Still will that memory on thee grievous fall.

He from that former life of ours turned me,
Who goes before me; but few days agone,
When full-orbed showed his sister whom we see"

(I pointed to the sun), " he led me on,
Through the deep night of those who die indeed,
With this true flesh which follows him alone.

My path from thence his health and comfort speed,
Climbing and winding round the mountain's side,
Which makes you straight whom the world bent with greed.

So far he saith that he will be my guide
Till I shall be where Beatrice dwells;
There I must stay, by him uncompanied.

Virgil this is, who thus his message tells,"
Pointing to him, " the other is that shade,
For whom but now your realm through all its dells

Shook, when for him its full release it made.''