With the same sunset and same sunrise nearly

Sit Buggia and the city whence I was,

That with its blood once made the harbor hot.

Folco that people called me unto whom

My name was known; and now with me this heaven

Imprints itself, as I did once with it;

For more the daughter of Belus never burned,

Nor

Offending both Sichæus and Creusa,

Than I, so long as it became my locks,

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When Iole he in his heart had locked.

Yet here is no repenting, but we smile,

Not at the fault, which comes not back to mind,
But at the power which ordered and foresaw.

Here we behold the art that doth adorn

With such affection, and the good discover
Whereby the world above turns that below.

But that thou wholly satisfied mayst bear

Thy wishes hence which in this sphere are born,
Still farther to proceed behoveth me.

Thou fain wouldst know who is within this light
That here beside me thus is scintillating,

Even as a sunbeam in the limpid water.

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Then know thou, that within there is at rest

Rahab, and being to our order joined,

With her in its supremest grade 't is sealed. Into this heaven, where ends the shadowy cone

Cast by your world, before all other souls First of Christ's Triumph was she taken up. Full meet it was to leave her in some heaven,

Even as a palm of the high victory

Which he acquired with one palm and the other, Because she favored the first glorious deed

Of Joshua upon the Holy Land,

That little stirs the memory of the Pope.

Thy city, which an offshoot is of him

Who first upon his Maker turned his back,
And whose ambition is so sorely wept,

Brings forth and scatters the accursed flower

Which both the sheep and lambs hath led astray,

Since it has turned the shepherd to a wolf. For this the Evangel and the mighty Doctors Are derelict, and only the Decretals

So studied that it shows upon their margins.

On this are Pope and Cardinals intent;

Their meditations reach not Nazareth,

There where his pinions Gabriel unfolded;

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Of Rome, which have a cemetery been Unto the soldiery that followed Peter, Shall soon be free from this adultery."

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CANTO Х.

LOOKING into his Son with all the Love
Which each of them eternally breathes forth,
The primal and unutterable Power
Whate'er before the mind or eye revolves

With so much order made, there can be none
Who this beholds without enjoying Him.

Lift up then, Reader, to the lofty wheels

With me thy vision straight unto that part
Where the one motion on the other strikes,

And there begin to contemplate with joy

That Master's art, who in himself so loves it
That never doth his eye depart therefrom.
Behold how from that point goes branching off

The oblique circle, which conveys the planets,
To satisfy the world that calls upon them;
And if their pathway were not thus inflected,

Much virtue in the heavens would be in vain,
And almost every power below here dead.

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If from the straight line distant more or less
Were the departure, much would wanting be
Above and underneath of mundane order.
Remain now, Reader, still upon thy bench,

In thought pursuing that which is foretasted,
If thou wouldst jocund be instead of weary.
I've set before thee; henceforth feed thyself,

The

For to itself diverteth all my care

That theme whereof I have been made the scribe. greatest of the ministers of nature,

Who with the power of heaven the world imprints

And measures with his light the time for us, With that part which above is called to mind Conjoined, along the spirals was revolving, Where each time earlier he presents himself;

And I was with him; but of the ascending

I was not conscious, saving as a man

Of a first thought is conscious ere it come;
And Beatrice, she who is seen to pass

From good to better, and so suddenly
That not by time her action is expressed,

How lucent in herself must she have been!

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And what was in the sun, wherein I entered,
Apparent not by color but by light,