Paradiso: Canto II

O ye who in your little skiff, longing to hear, have followed on my keel that singeth on its way,

turn to revisit your own shores; commit you not to the open sea; for perchance, losing me, ye would be left astray.

The water which I take was never coursed before; Minerva bloweth, Apollo guideth me, and the nine Muses point me to the Bears.

Ye other few, who timely have lift up your necks for bread of angels whereby life is here sustained but wherefrom none cometh away sated,

ye may indeed commit your vessel to the deep keeping my furrow, in advance of the water that is falling back to the level.

The glorious ones who fared to Colchis not so marvelled as shall ye, when Jason turned ox-plough-man in their sight.

The thirst, born with us and ne'er failing, for the god-like realm bore us swift almost as ye see the heaven.

Beatrice was gazing upward, and I on her; and perchance in such space as an arrow pauses and flies and is discharged from the nocking point

I saw me arrived where a wondrous thing drew my sight to it; and therefore she from whom my doing might not be hidden

turning to me as much in joy as beauty, "Direct thy mind to God in gratitude," she said, "who hath united us with the first star."

Meseemed a cloud enveloped us, shining, dense, firm and polished, like diamond smitten by the sun.

Within itself the eternal pearl received us, as water doth receive a ray of light, though still itself uncleft.

If I was body, — and if here we conceive not how one dimension could support another, which must be, if body into body creep, —

the more should longing enkindle us to see that Essence wherein we behold how our own nature and God unified themselves.

There what we hold by faith shall be beheld, not demonstrated, but self-known in fashion of the initial truth which man believeth.

I answered: "Lady, devoutly as I most may, do I thank him who hath removed me from the mortal world.

But tell me what those dusky marks upon this body, which down there on earth make folk to tell the tale of Cain?"

She smiled a little, and then: And if," she said, "the opinion of mortals goeth wrong, where the key of sense doth not unlock,

truly the shafts of wonder should no longer pierce thee; since even when the senses give the lead thou see'st reason hath wings too short.

But tell me what thou, of thyself, thinkest concerning it? "And I: "That which to us appeareth diverse in this high region, I hold to be produced by bodies rare and dense."

And she: "Verily, thou shalt see thy thought plunged deep in falsity, if well thou hearken to the argument which I shall make against it.

The eighth sphere revealeth many lights to you, the which in quality, as eke in quantity, may be observed of diverse countenance.

If rare and dense alone produced this thing, one only virtue, more or less or equally distributed, were in them all.

Diverse virtues must needs be fruits of formal principles, the which, save only one, would have no leave to be, upon thy reasoning.

Again, were rarity cause of that duskiness whereof thou makest question, either in some certain part, right through, thus stinted of its matter

were this planet; or, like as a body doth dispose the fat and lean, would it alternate pages in its volume.

Were the first true, 'twould be revealed in the eclipses of the sun, by the light shining through it, as it doth when hurled on aught else rare.

This is not; wherefore we have to see what of the other case, and if it chance that I make vain this also, thy thought will be refuted.

If it be that this rare matter goeth not throughout, needs must there be a limit, from which its contrary doth intercept its passing on;

and thence that other's ray were so cast back, as colour doth return from glass which hideth lead behind it.

Now thou wilt urge that the ray here is darkened rather than in other parts, because here it is recast from further back.

From this plea experiment may disentangle thee, (if thou wilt make the proof) which ever is the spring of the rivers of your arts.

Three mirrors thou shalt take, and set two equally remote from thee; and let the third further removed strike on thine eyes between the other two.

Turning to them, have a light set behind thy back, enkindling the three mirrors, and, back-smitten by them all, coming again to thee.

Whereas in size the more distant shew shall not have so great stretch, yet thou there shalt see it needs must shine as brightly as the others.

Now, — as at the stroke of the warm rays the substrate of the snow is stripped both of the colour and the coldness which it had, —

thee, so left stripped in thine intellect, would I inform with light so living, it shall tremble as thou lookest on it.

Within the heaven of the divine peace whirleth a body, in whose virtue lieth the being of all that it containeth.

The heaven next following, which hath so many things to show, parteth this being amid diverse essences, which it distinguisheth and doth contain;

the other circling bodies by various differentiatings, dispose the distinct powers they have within themselves, unto their ends and to their fertilisings.

These organs of the universe go, as thou seest now, from grade to grade; for from above do they receive, and downward do they work.

Now mark well how I thread this pass to the truth for which thou longest, that thou thereafter mayest know to keep the ford alone.

The movement and the virtue of the sacred wheelings, as the hammer's art from the smith, must needs be an effluence from the blessed movers;

and the heaven which so many lights make beautiful, from the deep mind which rolleth it, taketh the image and thereof maketh the seal.

And as the soul within your dust, through members differing and conformed to divers powers, doth diffuse itself,

so doth the Intelligence deploy its goodness, multiplied through the stars, revolving still on its own unity.

Diverse virtue maketh diverse alloy with the precious body which it quickeneth, wherein, as life in you, it is upbound.

By cause of the glad nature whence it floweth, the mingled virtue shineth through the body, as gladness doth through living pupil.

Thence cometh what seems different 'twixt light and light, and not from dense and rare; this is the formal principle that produceth, conformably to its own excellence, the turbid and the clear."