Classic Poem

Paradise: Canto XXVI. St. John Examines Dante Concerning Love

St. John examines Dante concerning Love.--Dante's
sight restored.--Adam appears, and answers questions put to him
by Dante.

While I was apprehensive because of my quenched sight, a breath
which made me attentive issued from the effulgent flame that
quenched it, saying, "While thou art regaining the sense of
sight which thou hast consumed on me, it is well that thou make
up for it by discourse. Begin then, and tell whereto thy soul is
aimed, and make thy reckoning that sight is in thee bewildered
and not dead; because the Lady who conducts thee through this
divine region has in her look the virtue which the band of
Ananias had."[1] I said, "According to her pleasure, or soon or
late, let the cure come to the eyes which were gates when she
entered with the fire wherewith I ever burn! The Good which makes
this court content is Alpha and Omega of whatsoever writing Love
reads to me, either low or loud." That same voice which had taken
from me fear of the sudden dazzling, laid on me the charge to
speak
further, and said, "Surely with a finer sieve it behoves thee to
clarify;
it behoves thee to tell who directed thy bow to such a target."
And I,
"By philosophic arguments and by authority that hence descends,
such love
must needs be impressed on me; for the good, so far as it is
good, in
proportion as it is understood, kindles love; and so much the
greater as the more of goodness it includes within itself.
Therefore, to the Essence (wherein is such supremacy that every
good which is found outside of It is naught else than a beam of
Its own radiance), more than to any other, the mind of every one
who discerns the truth on which this argument is founded must
needs be moved in love.[2] Such truth to my intelligence he makes
plain, who demonstrates to me the first love of all the
sempiternal substances.[3] The voice of the true Author makes it
plain who, speaking of Himself, says to Moses, 'I will make thee
see all goodness.'[4] Thou, too, makest it plain to me, beginning
the lofty proclamation which there below, above all other trump,
declares the secret of this place on high."[5] And I heard, "By
human understanding, and by authorities concordant with it, thy
sovran love looks unto God; but say, further, if thou feelest
other cords draw thee towards Him, so that thou mayest declare
with how many teeth this love bites thee."

[1] Acts ix.

[2] The argument is,--Whatever is good kindles love for itself;
the greater the good the greater the love; God is the supreme
good and therefore the chief object of love.

[3] It is doubtful to whom Dante here refers. The first love of
immortal creatures is for their own First Cause.

[4] "I will make all my goodness pass before thee."--Exodus,
xxxiii, 19.

[5] "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God,
and God in him."--1 John, iv. 16.


The holy intention of the Eagle of Christ was not latent to me;
nay,
rather I perceived whither he wished to lead my profession;
therefore, I
began again: "All those bitings which can make the heart turn to
God have
been concurrent unto my charity;[1] for the existence of the
world, and
my own existence, the death that He endured that I may live, and
that
which all the faithful hope even as I do, together with the
aforesaid
living knowledge, have drawn me from the sea of perverted love,
and have
set me on the shore of the right. The leaves, wherewith all the
garden of
the Eternal Gardener is enleaved, I love in proportion as good is
borne
unto them from Him."

[1] Have concurred to inspire me with love of God.


Soon as I was silent a most sweet song resounded through the
heavens, and my Lady said with the rest, "Holy, Holy, Holy."

And as at a keen light sleep is broken by the spirit of sight,
which runs to the splendor that goes from coat to coat,[1] and he
who
awakes shrinks from what he sees, so confused is his sudden
wakening,
until his judgment comes to his aid; thus Beatrice chased away
every mote
from my eyes with the radiance of her own, which were resplendent
more
than a thousand miles; so that I then saw better than before;
and, as it were amazed, I asked about a fourth light which I saw
with us. And my Lady, "Within those rays the first soul which
the First Power ever created gazes with joy upon its creator."

[1] The spirit of the sight runs to meet the light which flashes
through the successive coats of the eye.


As the bough that bends its top at passing of the wind, and then
lifts itself by its own virtue which raises it, so did I, in
amazement, the while she was speaking; and then a desire to
speak, wherewith I was burning, gave me again assurance, and I
began, "O Apple, that alone wast produced mature, O ancient
Father, to whom every bride is daughter and daughter-in-law,
devoutly as I can, I supplicate thee that thou speak to me; thou
seest my wish, and in order to hear thee quickly, I do not tell
it."

Sometimes an animal, which is covered up, so stirs, that his
desire must needs become apparent through the corresponding
movement which that which wraps him makes; and in like manner the
first soul made evident to me, through its covering, how gladly
it came to do me pleasure. Then it breathed, "Without its being
uttered to me by thee, I better discern thy wish, than thou
whatever thing is most certain to thee; because I see it in the
truthful mirror which makes of Itself a likeness of other tbings,
while nothing makes for It a likeness of Itself.[1] Thou wouldst
hear how long it is since God placed me in the lofty garden where
this Lady disposed thee for so long a stairway; and how long it
was a delight to my eyes; and the proper cause of the great
wrath; and the idiom which I used and which I made. Now, my son,
the tasting of the tree was not by itself the cause of so long an
exile, but only the overpassing of the bound. There whence thy
Lady moved Virgil, I longed for this assembly during four
thousand three hundred and two revolutions of the sun; and while
I was on earth I saw him return to all the lights of his path
nine hundred and thirty times. The tongue which I spoke was all
extinct long before the people of Nimrod attempted their
unaccomplishable work; for never was any product of the
reason (because of human liking, which alters, following the
heavens) durable for ever.[2] A natural action it is for man to
speak; but, thus or thus, nature then leaves for you to do
according as it pleases you. Before I descended to the infernal
anguish, the Supreme Good, whence comes the gladness that swathes
me, was on earth called I; EL it was called afterwards;[3] and
that must needs be,[4] for the custom of mortals is as a leaf on
a branch, which goes away and another comes. On the mountain
which rises highest from the wave I was, with pure life and
sinful, from the first hour to that which, when the sun changes
quadrant, follows the sixth hour."[5]

[1] All things are seen in God as if reflected in a mirror; but
nothing can reflect an image of God. "In the eternal Idea, as in
a glass, the works of God are more perfectly seen than in
themselves. . . . But it is impossible for a thing created to
represent that which is increated."--John Norton, The Orthodox
Evangelist, 1554, p. 332.

[2] Speech, a product of human reason, changes according to the
pleasure of main, which alters from time to time under the
influence of the heavens.

[3] God was known in the primitive language by the sacred and
mystical symbol I or J, the Hebrew letter Jod; afterwards by the
term El: the first answering to Jehovah, the second to Elohim.

[4] Such change in the name was inevitable, because of the
changing customs of thought and speech.

[5] Adam's stay in the Earthly Paradise on the summit of the
mount of Purgatory was thus a little more than six hours; the sun
changes quadrant with every six hours.EnglishDante Aligherilove poemlove poemslove poems for herlove poetrypoems about loveromantic poems