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As primal splendor that which is reflected. And as are spanned athwart a tender cloud Two rainbows parallel and like in color, When Juno to her handmaid gives command, (The one without born of the one within, Like to the speaking of that vagrant one Whom love consumed as doth the sun the vapors.)

And make the people here, through covenant

God set with Noah, presageful of the world That shall no more be covered with a flood, In such wise of those sempiternal roses

The garlands twain encompassed us about, And thus the outer to the inner answered. After the dance, and other grand rejoicings,

Both of the singing, and the flaming forth Effulgence with effulgence blithe and tender, Together, at once, with one volition stopped,

(Even as the eyes, that, as volition moves them, Must needs together shut and lift themselves,) Out of the heart of one of the new lights

There came a voice, that needle to the star Made me appear in turning thitherward. And it began: "The love that makes me fair Draws me to speak about the other leader, By whom so well is spoken here of mine. 'Tis right, where one is, to bring in the other, That, as they were united in their warfare, Together likewise may their glory shine. The soldiery of Christ, which it had cost So dear to arm again, behind the standard Moved slow and doubtful and in numbers few,

Line 25. Together, at once, with one accord had stopped,

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When the Emperor who reigneth evermore
Provided for the host that was in peril,

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Through grace alone and not that it was worthy; And, as was said, he to his Bride brought succor With champions twain, at whose deed, at whose word

The straggling people were together drawn.
Within that region where the sweet west wind
Rises to open the new leaves, wherewith
Europe is seen to clothe herself afresh,
Not far off from the beating of the waves,
Behind which in his long career the sun
Sometimes conceals himself from every man,
Is situate the fortunate Calahorra,

Under protection of the mighty shield
In which the Lion subject is and sovereign.
Therein was born the amorous paramour

Of Christian Faith, the athlete consecrate,
Kind to his own and cruel to his foes;
And when it was created was his mind

Replete with such a living energy,
That in his mother her it made prophetic.
As soon as the espousals were complete

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Between him and the Faith at holy font, Where they with mutual safety dowered each other,

The woman, who for him had given assent,

Saw in a dream the admirable fruit

That issue would from him and from his heirs;

And that he might be construed as he was,

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A spirit from this place went forth to name him With His possessive whose he wholly was. Dominic was he called; and him I speak of

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Even as of the husbandman whom Christ
Elected to his garden to assist him.
Envoy and servant sooth he seemed of Christ,
For the first love made manifest in him

Was the first counsel that was given by Christ. Silent and wakeful many a time was he

Discovered by his nurse upon the ground, As if he would have said, 'For this I came.' O thou his father, Felix verily !

O thou his mother, verily Joanna, If this, interpreted, means as is said! Not for the world which people toil for now In following Ostiense and Taddeo, But through his longing after the true manna, He in short time became so great a teacher, That he began to go about the vineyard, Which fadeth soon, if faithless be the dresser ; And of the See, (that once was more benignant Unto the righteous poor, not through itself, But him who sits there and degenerates,) Not to dispense or two or three for six,

Not any fortune of first vacancy,

Non decimas quæ sunt pauperum Dei, He asked for, but against the errant world

Permission to do battle for the seed,

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Of which these four and twenty plants surround

thee.

Then with the doctrine and the will together,

With office apostolical he moved,

Like torrent which some lofty vein out-presses;

And in among the shoots heretical

His impetus with greater fury smote,

Wherever the resistance was the greatest.

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Of him were made thereafter divers runnels,
Whereby the garden catholic is watered,
So that more living its plantations stand.
If such the one wheel of the Biga was,

In which the Holy Church itself defended
And in the field its civic battle won,
Truly full manifest should be to thee

The excellence of the other, unto whom
Thomas so courteous was before my coming.
But still the orbit, which the highest part

Of its circumference made, is derelict,

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So that the mould is where was once the crust. His family, that had straight forward moved With feet upon his footprints, are turned round So that they set the point upon the heel. And soon aware they will be of the harvest

Of this bad husbandry, when shall the tares Complain the granary is taken from them. Yet say I, he who searcheth leaf by leaf

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Our volume through, would still some page dis

cover

Where he could read, I am as I am wont.' "T will not be from Casal nor Acquasparta,

From whence come such unto the written word

That one avoids it, and the other narrows. Bonaventura of Bagnoregio's life

Am I, who always in great offices Postponed considerations sinister. Here are Illuminato and Agostino,

Who of the first barefooted beggars were That with the halter friends of God became. Hugh of Saint Victor is among them here,

Line 132. That with the cord the friends of God became.

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And Peter Mangiador, and Peter of Spain,

Who down below in volumes twelve is shining; Nathan the seer, and metropolitan

Chrysostom, and Anselmus, and Donatus

Who deigned to lay his hand to the first art; Here is Rabanus, and beside me here

Shines the Calabrian Abbot Joachim, He with the spirit of prophecy endowed. To celebrate so great a paladin

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Have moved me the impassioned courtesy Of Fra Tommaso, and his speech discreet; And with me they have moved this company." 145

CANTO XIII.

Let him imagine, who would well conceive
What now I saw, and let him while I speak
Retain the image as a steadfast rock,
The fifteen stars, that in their divers regions
The sky enliven with a light so great
That it transcends all clusters of the air;
Let him the Wain imagine unto which

Our vault of heaven sufficeth night and day,
So that in turning of its pole it fails not;
Let him the mouth imagine of the horn
That in the point beginneth of the axis

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Round about which the primal wheel revolves, To have fashioned of themselves two signs in

heaven,

Like unto that which Minos' daughter made, The moment when she felt the frost of death; 1 And one to have its rays within the other,

Line 144. And the discreet discourses of Friar Thomas;