Purgatorio
Canto 33
Translated by Robert Hollander
1 'Deus, venerunt gentes,' the ladies,
2 now three, now four, in alternation sang,
3 beginning their sweet psalmody in tears,
4 and Beatrice, sighing and compassionate,
5 was listening, her face so changed in its expression
6 that Mary's, at the cross, was hardly more transformed.
7 But when the other virgins stopped their song,
8 allowing her to speak, she answered, rising
9 to her feet and blazing like a fire:
10 'Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum,
11 my beloved sisters,
12 modicum, et vos videbitis me.'
13 Then she arranged the seven before her
14 and, with a gesture, signaled me, the lady,
15 and the sage who had remained, to follow.
16 Thus she moved forward. I do not believe
17 she had left her tenth step on the ground
18 when her piercing eyes met mine
19 and, with a calmer look, she said: 'Follow me
20 more closely, so that, if I should speak to you,
21 you will be able to hear me better.'
22 And as soon as I, obeying, drew up near her,
23 she asked: 'My brother, since we are together,
24 why do you not dare to ask me questions?'
25 As with those who are too shy
26 when speaking to their betters and thus fail
27 to bring their words distinctly to their lips,
28 so it was with me, and in a failing voice
29 I began: 'My lady, You know what I lack
30 and exactly how You may provide it.'
31 And she: 'Free yourself at once
32 from the snares of fear and shame,
33 no longer speaking as a man does from his dream.
34 'Know that the vessel which the serpent broke
35 was and is not. Let those who are to blame
36 take heed: God's vengeance fears no hindrance.
37 'The eagle that left its feathers on the car
38 so that it first was monster and then prey
39 shall not remain without an heir forever.
40 'For I see clearly and do thus declare:
41 stars already near at hand promise us a time
42 safe from all delay, from all impediment,
43 'when a Five Hundred Ten and Five,
44 sent by God, shall slay the thieving wench
45 and the giant sinning there beside her.
46 'Perhaps my words, obscure as those of Themis
47 or the Sphinx, persuade you less
48 because, like theirs, they cloud your mind.
49 'Events soon to occur shall be the Naiads
50 that solve this hard enigma
51 without the loss of flocks or ears of corn.
52 'Mark them, and, as they come from me,
53 set these words down for those
54 who live the life that is a race to death.
55 'And keep in mind, when you shall write them,
56 not to conceal the story of the tree
57 that now not once but twice has here been plundered.
58 'Whoever robs that tree or does it harm
59 by blasphemous act gives great offense to God,
60 since He, with hidden purpose, made it sacred.
61 'By eating of that tree the first soul longed
62 in pain and in desire five thousand years and more
63 for Him who in Himself redeemed that bite.
64 'Your wits are sleeping if they do not grasp
65 that for a special reason it stands so tall
66 and is inverted, growing wider at its top.
67 'And if vain thoughts had not been water of the Elsa
68 to your mind, and your delight in them
69 a Pyramus to make the mulberry turn red,
70 'by such attributes alone you might have seen
71 the moral sense of the justice of God
72 in His interdiction of the tree.
73 'But since I see your mind has turned to stone
74 and, petrified, has gone so dark
75 that the light of what I say confounds you,
76 'I wish that, if not written, then sketched out,
77 you carry what I've said inside you, just as
78 a pilgrim brings his staff back wreathed with palm.'
79 And I: 'Even as wax maintains the seal
80 and does not alter the imprinted image,
81 my brain now bears Your stamp.
82 'But why is it that Your longed-for words
83 soar up so far beyond my sight
84 the more it strives the more it cannot reach them?'
85 'So that you may come to understand,' she said,
86 'the school that you have followed
87 and see if what it teaches follows well my words,
88 'and see that your way is as far from God's
89 as that highest heaven, which spins the fastest,
90 is distant from the earth.'
91 To that I answered: 'As far as I remember
92 I have not ever estranged myself from You,
93 nor does my conscience prick me for it.'
94 'But if you cannot remember that,'
95 she answered, smiling, 'only recollect
96 how you have drunk today of Lethe,
97 'and if from seeing smoke we argue there is fire
98 then this forgetfulness would clearly prove
99 your faulty will had been directed elsewhere.
100 'But from now on my words shall be
101 as naked as is needed
102 to make them plain to your crude sight.'
103 Now more resplendent and with slower steps
104 the sun was keeping its meridian circle, which,
105 now here, now there, shifts with one's point of view,
106 when, just as a man escorting others
107 comes to a halt if he discovers
108 something unexpected--or some sign of it,
109 the seven ladies halted just beside dim shadows,
110 such as, beneath green leaves and darker boughs,
111 mountains cast above their icy streams.
112 In front of the ladies it seemed to me I saw
113 Tigris and Euphrates issue from a single source
114 and, like friends, slowly part from one another.
115 'O light, O glory of the human race,
116 what water pours here from a single source,
117 then separates, departing from itself?'
118 To my question she replied: 'Ask your question
119 of Matelda.' And that fair lady answered,
120 as one who would be free from any blame:
121 'This and other things I have already told him.
122 And I am certain that Lethe's waters
123 did not conceal it from him.'
124 And Beatrice: 'Perhaps a greater care,
125 which often strips us of remembrance,
126 has veiled the eyes of his mind in darkness.
127 'But see Eunoe streaming forth there.
128 Bring him to it and, as you are accustomed,
129 revive the powers that are dead in him.'
130 As a gentle spirit that makes no excuses
131 but makes another's will its own
132 as soon as any signal makes that clear,
133 so, once she held me by the hand, the lady moved
134 and, as though she were mistress of that place,
135 said to Statius: 'Now come with him.'
136 If, reader, I had more ample space to write,
137 I should sing at least in part the sweetness
138 of the drink that never would have sated me,
139 but, since all the sheets
140 readied for this second canticle are full,
141 the curb of art lets me proceed no farther.
142 From those most holy waters
143 I came away remade, as are new plants
144 renewed with new-sprung leaves,
145 pure and prepared to rise up to the stars.