Purgatorio: Canto XXIII

While I was thus fixing mine eyes through the green leaves, even as he is wont to do who throws away his life after birds,

my more than father said to me: “Son, come now onward, for the time which is allotted to us must be more usefully apportioned.”

I turned my face, and my step not less quickly, towards the sages, who were discoursing so that they made the going of no cost to me.

And lo, in tears and song was heard: “Labia mea Domine” in such manner that it gave birth to joy and grief.

“O sweet Father, what is that which I hear?” began I; and he: “Shades that perchance go loosening the knot of their debt.”

Even as musing wayfarers do, who on overtaking strange folk by the way, turn round to them and stay not,

so behind us, moving more quickly, coming, and passing by, a throng of spirits, silent and devout, was gazing upon us in wonder.

Dark and hollow-eyed was each one, pallid of face, and so wasted away that the skin took form from the bones.

I do not believe that Erysichthon became thus withered to the very skin by hunger, when greatest fear he had thereof.

I said in thought within me: “Behold the people that lost Jerusalem when Mary fed on her child.”

Their eye-sockets seemed gemless rings: he who reads ‘omo’ in the face of man would clearly have recognised there the ‘m.’

Who, not knowing the reason, would believe that the scent of fruit and that of water had thus wrought, by begetting desire?

Already I was in astonishment at what thus famishes them, because of the reason not yet manifest, of their leanness, and of their sad scurf,

when lo, from the hollow of the head a shade turned its eyes to me and fixedly did gaze; then cried aloud: “What grace is this to me?”

Never had I recognised him by the face, but in his voice, was revealed to me, that which was blotted out in his countenance.

This spark rekindled within me all my knowledge of the changed features, and I recognised the face of Forese.

“Ah stare not,” he prayed, “at the dry leprosy which discolours my skin, nor at any default of flesh that I may have,

but tell me sooth of thyself, and who those two spirits are that there make thy escort; abide thou not without speaking to me.”

“Thy face,” answered I him, “which in death I wept for once, gives me now not less grief, even unto tears, seeing it so disfigured.

Therefore tell me, in God’s name, what strips you so; make me not talk while I am marvelling, for ill can he speak who is full of other desire.”

And he to me: “From the eternal counsel virtue descends into the water, and into the tree left behind, whereby I thus do waste away.

All this people, who weeping sing, sanctify themselves again in hunger and thirst, for having followed appetite to excess.

The scent which issues from the fruit, and from the spray that is diffused over the green, kindles within us a desire to eat and to drink.

And not once only, while circling this road, is our pain renewed, I say pain and ought to say solace;

for that desire leads us to the tree, which led glad Christ to say: ‘Eli’ when he made us free with his blood.”

And I to him: “Forese, from that day on which thou didst change the world for a better life, not five years have revolved till now.

If power to sin more came to an end in thee ere the hour supervened of the holy sorrow which weds us anew to God,

how art thou come up here? I thought to find thee yet down below, where time for time is repaid.”

And he to me: “Thus soon hath led me to drink the sweet wormwood of the torments, my Nella by her flood of tears;

by her prayers devout and by sighs she hath brought me from the borders where they wait, and set me free from the other circles.

So much more precious and beloved of God is my dear widow, whom I loved so well, as she is the more lonely in good works;

for the Barbagia of Sardinia is far more modest in its women than the Barbagia where I left her.

O sweet brother, what wouldst thou have me say? Already in my vision is a time to come to which this hour shall not be very old,

when the brazen-faced women of Florence shall be forbidden from the pulpit to go abroad showing their breasts with the paps.

What Barbary, what Saracen women ever lived, to whom either spiritual, or other discipline were necessary, to make them go covered?

But if the shameless creatures were assured of what swift heaven is preparing for them, already would they have their mouths open to howl:

for if prevision here beguile me not, they shall be sorrowing ere he shall clothe his cheeks with down, who now is soothed with lullaby.

Pray brother, look that thou hide thee no longer from me; thou seest that not only I, but all this people are gazing where thou veilest the sun.”

Wherefore I to him: “If thou bring back to mind what thou hast been with me and what I have been with thee, the present memory will still be grievous.

From that life he who goeth before me did turn me, the other day, when full was shown to you the sister of him,”

(and I pointed to the sun). “This one through the deep night hath led me from the truly dead, in this solid flesh which follows him.

Thence his comforts have brought me up, ascending and circling the mount, which makes you straight whom the world made crooked.

So long he talks of making me his comrade, until I shall be there where Beatrice will be; there must I remain bereft of him.

Virgil is he who thus speaks to me (and I pointed to him) and this other is that shade for whom before in every scarp your realm did shake which now discharges him from itself.”