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Paradiso
Canto 33
Translated by Robert Hollander
1 'Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son,
2 more humble and exalted than any other creature,
3 fixed goal of the eternal plan,
4 'you are the one who so ennobled human nature
5 that He, who made it first, did not disdain
6 to make Himself of its own making.
7 'Your womb relit the flame of love --
8 its heat has made this blossom seed
9 and flower in eternal peace.
10 'To us you are a noonday torch of charity,
11 while down below, among those still in flesh,
12 you are the living fountainhead of hope.
13 'Lady, you are so great and so prevail above,
14 should he who longs for grace not turn to you,
15 his longing would be doomed to wingless flight.
16 'Your loving kindness does not only aid
17 whoever seeks it, but many times
18 gives freely what has yet to be implored.
19 'In you clemency, in you compassion,
20 in you munificence, in you are joined
21 all virtues found in any creature.
22 'This man who, from within the deepest pit
23 the universe contains up to these heights
24 has seen the disembodied spirits, one by one,
25 'now begs you, by your grace, to grant such power
26 that, by lifting up his eyes,
27 he may rise higher toward his ultimate salvation.
28 'And I, who never burned for my own seeing
29 more than now I burn for his, offer all my prayers,
30 and pray that they may not fall short,
31 'so that your prayers disperse on his behalf
32 all clouds of his mortality and let
33 the highest beauty be displayed to him.
34 'This too, my Queen, I ask of you, who can achieve
35 whatever you desire, that you help him preserve,
36 after such vision, the purity of his affections.
37 'Let your protection rule his mortal passions.
38 See Beatrice, with so many of the blessed,
39 palms pressed together, joining me in prayer.'
40 Those eyes belovèd and revered by God,
41 fixed on him who prayed, made clear to us
42 how dear to her all true devotion is.
43 Then she turned her gaze to the eternal Light.
44 It is incorrect to think that any living being
45 can penetrate that brightness with such unblinking eyes.
46 And, as I neared the end of all desire,
47 I extended to its limit, as was right,
48 the ardor of the longing in my soul.
49 With his smile, Bernard signaled
50 that I look upward, but of my own accord
51 I was already doing what he wished,
52 for my sight, becoming pure,
53 rose higher and higher through the ray
54 of the exalted light that in itself is true.
55 From that time on my power of sight exceeded
56 that of speech, which fails at such a vision,
57 as memory fails at such abundance.
58 Just as the dreamer, after he awakens,
59 still stirred by feelings that the dream evoked,
60 cannot bring the rest of it to mind,
61 such am I, my vision almost faded from my mind,
62 while in my heart there still endures
63 the sweetness that was born of it.
64 Thus the sun unseals an imprint in the snow.
65 Thus the Sibyl's oracles, on weightless leaves,
66 lifted by the wind, were swept away.
67 O Light exalted beyond mortal thought,
68 grant that in memory I see again
69 but one small part of how you then appeared
70 and grant my tongue sufficient power
71 that it may leave behind a single spark
72 of glory for the people yet to come,
73 since, if you return but briefly to my mind
74 and then resound but softly in these lines,
75 the better will your victory be conceived.
76 I believe, from the keenness of the living ray
77 that I endured, I would have been undone
78 had I withdrawn my eyes from it.
79 And I remember that, on this account,
80 I grew more bold and thus sustained my gaze
81 until I reached the Goodness that is infinite.
82 O plenitude of grace, by which I could presume
83 to fix my eyes upon eternal Light
84 until my sight was spent on it!
85 In its depth I saw contained,
86 by love into a single volume bound,
87 the pages scattered through the universe:
88 substances, accidents, and the interplay between them,
89 as though they were conflated in such ways
90 that what I tell is but a simple light.
91 I believe I understood the universal form
92 of this dense knot because I feel my joy expand,
93 rejoicing as I speak of it.
94 My memory of that moment is more lost
95 than five and twenty centuries make dim that enterprise
96 when, in wonder, Neptune at the Argo's shadow stared.
97 Thus all my mind, absorbed,
98 was gazing, fixed, unmoving and intent,
99 becoming more enraptured in its gazing.
100 He who beholds that Light is so enthralled
101 that he would never willingly consent
102 to turn away from it for any other sight,
103 because the good that is the object of the will
104 is held and gathered in perfection there
105 that elsewhere would imperfect show.
106 Now my words will come far short
107 of what I still remember, like a babe's
108 who at his mother's breast still wets his tongue.
109 Not that the living Light at which I gazed
110 took on other than a single aspect --
111 for It is always what It was before --
112 but that my sight was gaining strength, even as I gazed
113 at that sole semblance and, as I changed,
114 it too was being, in my eyes, transformed.
115 In the deep, transparent essence of the lofty Light
116 there appeared to me three circles
117 having three colors but the same extent,
118 and each one seemed reflected by the other
119 as rainbow is by rainbow, while the third one seemed fire,
120 equally breathed forth by one and by the other.
121 O how scant is speech, too weak to frame my thoughts.
122 Compared to what I still recall my words are faint --
123 to call them little is to praise them much.
124 O eternal Light, abiding in yourself alone,
125 knowing yourself alone, and, known to yourself
126 and knowing, loving and smiling on yourself!
127 That circling which, thus conceived,
128 appeared in you as light's reflection,
129 once my eyes had gazed on it a while, seemed,
130 within itself and in its very color,
131 to be painted with our likeness,
132 so that my sight was all absorbed in it.
133 Like the geometer who fully applies himself
134 to square the circle and, for all his thought,
135 cannot discover the principle he lacks,
136 such was I at that strange new sight.
137 I tried to see how the image fit the circle
138 and how it found its where in it.
139 But my wings had not sufficed for that
140 had not my mind been struck by a bolt
141 of lightning that granted what I asked.
142 Here my exalted vision lost its power.
143 But now my will and my desire, like wheels revolving
144 with an even motion, were turning with
145the Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.
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