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Paradiso
Canto 27
Translated by Robert Hollander
1 'To the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,
2 glory,' cried all the souls of Paradise,
3 and I became drunk on the sweetness of their song.
4 It seemed to me I saw the universe
5 smile, so that my drunkenness
6 came now through hearing and through sight.
7 O happiness! O joy beyond description!
8 O life fulfilled in love and peace!
9 O riches held in store, exempt from craving!
10 Before my eyes four torches were aflame.
11 The one who, luminous, had come forth first
12 began to glow more brilliantly,
13 his aspect changing, as would Jupiter's
14 if he and Mars were birds
15 and had exchanged their plumage.
16 The providence that there assigns
17 both time and duty had imposed silence
18 on every member of the holy choir,
19 when I heard: 'If my color changes, do not be amazed,
20 for while I am speaking you shall see
21 the color of each soul here change as well.
22 'He who on earth usurps my place,
23 my place, my place, which in the eyes
24 of God's own Son is vacant,
25 'has made my tomb a sewer of blood and filth,
26 so that the Evil One, who fell from here above,
27 takes satisfaction there below.'
28 Then I saw that all this heaven was suffused
29 with the very color painted on those clouds
30 that face the sun at dawn or dusk.
31 As a chaste woman, certain of her virtue,
32 merely on hearing of another's fault,
33 makes evident the shame she feels for it,
34 just so did Beatrice change in her appearance,
35 and just such an eclipse, I think, there was above
36 when the Omnipotent felt pain.
37 Then he added these words to his first
38 with voice so altered from its former state
39 that even his looks were not more changed:
40 'The Bride of Christ was not nurtured with my blood --
41 nor that of Linus and of Cletus --
42 to serve the cause of gaining gold.
43 'Rather, to gain this joyous way of life
44 Sixtus, Pius, Calixtus, and Urban
45 shed their blood after many tears.
46 'It was never our intention that the one part
47 of Christ's fold should be seated on the right
48 of our successors, and the other on the left,
49 'nor that the keys entrusted to my keeping
50 should become devices on the standards
51 borne in battles waged against the baptized,
52 'nor that I become the imprint in a seal
53 on sale for fraudulence and bribes
54 so that I blush, in turn, with rage and shame.
55 'Ravenous wolves in shepherds' clothing
56 can be seen, from here above, in every pasture.
57 O God our defender, why do you not act?
58 'Cahorsines and Gascons prepare to drink our blood.
59 O lofty promise,
60 to what base end are you condemned to fall?
61 'But Providence on high, which by the deeds of Scipio
62 preserved in Rome the glory of the world,
63 shall, as I can clearly see, soon bring assistance.
64 'And you, my son, who, for your mortal burden,
65 must return below, make sure they hear this
66 from your mouth, not hiding what I do not hide.'
67 As when the sun touches the horn
68 of the heavenly Goat and the air
69 lets its frozen vapors fall in flakes,
70 so I saw the celestial sphere adorned
71 with triumphant flakes of vapor soaring upward,
72 souls who had now been with us for some time.
73 My eyes were following their forms
74 and followed them until the wider intervening space
75 made me unable to pursue them higher.
76 My lady, therefore, who saw that I was freed
77 from staring upward, said: 'Cast your sight below
78 and see how wide a circle you have traveled.'
79 Since the last time I looked down
80 I saw I had traversed all of the arc
81 from the midpoint of the first clime to its end,
82 so that on the one side I could see, beyond Gade
83 the mad track of Ulysses, on the other, nearly
84 to the shore where Europa made sweet burden of herself.
85 More space of this small patch of earth
86 could I have seen, had not the sun, beneath my feet,
87 now moved a sign and more away.
88 My loving mind, which always lingers lovingly
89 on my lady, ardently longed, still more than ever,
90 to let my eyes once more be fixed on her.
91 And if nature or art have fashioned lures
92 of human flesh, or of paintings done of it,
93 to catch the eyes and thus possess the mind,
94 all these combined would seem as nothing
95 compared to that divine beauty that shone on me
96 when I turned back and saw her smiling face.
97 And the power that her look bestowed on me
98 drew me from the fair nest of Leda
99 and thrust me into heaven's swiftest sphere.
100 Its most rapid and its most exalted parts
101 are so alike I cannot tell
102 which of them Beatrice chose to set me in.
103 But she, who knew my wish, began to speak,
104 smiling with such gladness that her face
105 seemed to express the very joy of God.
106 'The nature of the universe, which holds
107 the center still and moves all else around it,
108 starts here as from its boundary line.
109 'This heaven has no other where
110 but in the mind of God, in which is kindled
111 the love that turns it and the power it pours down.
112 'Light and love enclose it in a circle,
113 as it contains the others. Of that girding
114 He that girds it is the sole Intelligence.
115 'Its motion is not measured by another's,
116 but from it all the rest receive their measures,
117 even as does ten from its half and from its fifth.
118 'How time should have its roots in a single flower pot
119 and its foliage in all the others
120 may now become quite clear to you.
121 'O greed, it is you who plunge all mortals
122 so deep into your depths that not one has the power
123 to lift his eyes above your waves!
124 'The will of man bursts into blossom
125 but the never-ceasing rain reduces
126 the ripening plums to blighted rot.
127 'Loyalty and innocence are found
128 in little children only. Then, before
129 their cheeks are bearded, both are fled.
130 'One, still babbling, observes the fastdays,
131 who later, once his tongue is free,
132 devours any kind of food no matter what the month.
133 'Another, babbling, loves and heeds his mother,
134 who later, once his speech has been developed,
135 longs to see her buried in her grave.
136 'Thus does the white skin turn to black
137 in the first aspect of the lovely daughter
138 of him who brings the day and leaves behind the night.
139 'Lest you wonder at this, consider
140 that, on earth, there is no one to govern
141 and, in consequence, the human family strays.
142 'But, before all January leaves the winter
143 for the hundredth part neglected there below,
144 rays from these lofty circles shall shine forth
145 'so that the long-awaited tempest turn the ships,
146 setting their poops where now they have their prows.
147 Then shall the fleet run its true course
148 and the blossom shall be followed by good fruit.'
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