And that he might be construed as he was, A spirit from this place went forth to name him Even as of the husbandman whom Christ Discovered by his nurse upon the ground, O thou his mother, verily Joanna, If this, interpreted, means as is said! That he began to go about the vineyard, Not any fortune of first vacancy, He asked for, but against the errant world 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. Of him were made thereafter divers runnels, Whereby the garden catholic is watered, In which the Holy Church itself defended Truly full manifest should be to thee The excellence of the other, unto whom But still the orbit, which the highest part Of its circumference made, is derelict, So that the mould is where was once the crust. With feet upon his footprints, are turned round Of this bad husbandry, when shall the tares Yet say I, he who searcheth leaf by leaf Our volume through, would still some page discover 'Twill not be from Casal nor Acquasparta, From whence come such unto the written word Am I, who always in great offices 719 120 125 Here are Illuminato and Agostino, 130 Who of the first barefooted beggars were That with the cord the friends of God became. Hugh of Saint Victor is among them here, And Peter Mangiador, and Peter of Spain, 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 Have moved me the impassioned courtesy And the discreet discourses of Friar Thomas, And with me they have moved this company." CANTO XIII. LET him imagine, who would well conceive ་3་ 14C 143 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 Round about which the primal wheel revolves,- And both to whirl themselves in such a manner As swifter than the motion of the Chiana Of God's own mendicant was told to me, Was drawn the rib to form the beauteous cheek Been lawful to possess was all infused By the same power that both of them created; And hence at what I said above dost wonder, When I narrated that no second had The good which in the fifth light is enclosed. And thou shalt see thy creed and my discourse 25 That which can die, and that which dieth not, Are nothing but the splendour of the idea Which by his love our Lord brings into being; Because that living Light, which from its fount Effulgent flows, so that it disunites not From Him nor from the Love in them intrined, Through its own goodness reunites its rays In nine subsistences, as in a mirror, Itself eternally remaining One. Thence it descends to the last potencies, Downward from act to act becoming such That only brief contingencies it makes; And these contingencies I hold to be Things generated, which the heaven produces Remains immutable, and hence beneath After its kind bears worse and better fruit, And were the heaven in its supremest virtue, But nature gives it evermore deficient, In the like manner working as the artist, Who has the skill of art and hand that trembles. If then the fervent Love, the Vision clear, Of primal Virtue do dispose and seal, So that thine own opinion I commend, That human nature never yet has been, Now if no farther forth I should proceed, 'Then in what way was he without a peer?' But, that may well appear what now appears not, Think who he was, and what occasion moved him I've not so spoken that thou canst not see "Twas not to know the number in which are Or if in semicircle can be made Thou'lt see that it has reference alone And thus it can consist with thy belief To make thee, like a weary man, move slowly For very low among the fools is he Who affirms without distinction, or denies, As well in one as in the other case; Because it happens that full often bends Current opinion in the false direction, And then the feelings bind the intellect. Far more than uselessly he leaves the shore, (Since he returneth not the same he went,) Who fishes for the truth, and has no skill; And in the world proofs manifest thereof Parmenides, Melissus, Brissus are, And many who went on and knew not whither; Thus did Sabellius, Arius, and those fools Who have been even as swords unto the Scriptures Nor yet shall people be too confident 130 In judging, even as he is who doth count For I have seen all winter long the thorn Run o'er the sea throughout its course entire, |