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Been sated. But, since all the leaves are full,
Appointed for this second strain, mine art
With warning bridle checks me. I returned
From the most holy wave, regenerate,
E'en as new plants renewed with foliage new,
Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars.

137. Leaves the thirty-three cantos destined to the Purgatory. Dante gives to his poem a wonderful symmetry of proportion. Each cantica has thirty-three cantos, except the Hell, which has an introductory canto. Even the

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number of verses are almost the same in the three great divisions, Hell having 4720, Purgatory 4755, and Paradise 4758.

142. Each of the canticas ends with the word stars.

THE DIVINE COMEDY.

Paradise.

CANTO I.

ARGUMENT.

The Poet ascends towards the first heaven with Beatrice, who explains certain doubts which arise in his mind.

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His glory, by whose might all things are moved,
Pierces the universe, and in one part

Sheds more resplendence, elsewhere less.

In heaven,

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That largeliest of his light partakes, was I,
Witness of things, which, to relate again,
Surpasseth power of him who comes from thence;
For that, so near approaching its desire,
Our intellect is to such depth absorbed,
That memory cannot follow. Nathless all,
That in my thoughts I of that sacred realm
Could store, shall now be matter of my song.
Benign Apollo! this last labor aid;
And make me such a vessel of thy worth,
As thy own laurel claims, of me beloved.
Thus far hath one of steep Parnassus' brows

his magnetic beam, that gently warms The universe, and to each inward part With gentle penetration, though unseen, Shoots invisible virtue ev'n to the deep." Milton, P. L. iii. 586. = the Empyrean, seat of the God

3. Heaven head.

6. The original idea is more complete, "Nè sa nè può qual di lassù discende" = Where sa = knows, that is, his mind cannot remember, and può = is able, that is, words are not sufficient to describe.

ΤΟ

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7. God is the ultimate goal of the soul's desires. Cf. Purg. xxxi. 23, and Par. xxxiii. 45.

14. "Inspire me with such poetic power as he must have who deserves to be crowned with thy laurel." Of me beloved is wrong; the laurel is loved by Apollo on account of Daphne, who was changed into it.

15. Ovid mentions the two peaks of Parnassus in Met. i. 316. One was sacred to the Muses, the other to Apollo. Allegorically the meaning is, hitherto human wisdom has been sufficient, now divine wisdom is necessary.

Sufficed me; henceforth, there is need of both
For my remaining enterprise. Do thou
Enter into my bosom, and there breathe
So, as when Marsyas by thy hand, was dragged

Forth from his limbs, unsheathed. O power divine
If thou to me of thine impart so much,

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That of that happy realm the shadowed form
Traced in my thoughts I may set forth to view;
Thou shalt behold me of thy favored tree
Come to the foot, and crown myself with leaves:
For to that honor thou, and my high theme
Will fit me. If but seldom, mighty Sire!
To grace his triumph, gathers thence a wreath
Cæsar, or bard, (more shame for human wills
Depraved,) joy to the Delphic god must spring
From the Peneian foliage, when one breast

Is with such thirst inspired. From a small spark
Great flame hath risen: after me, perchance,
Others with better voice may pray, and gain,
From the Cyrrhæan city, answer kind.

Through divers passages, the world's bright lamp
Rises to mortals; but through that which joins
Four circles with the threefold cross, in best
Course, and in happiest constellation set,

He comes; and, to the worldly wax, best gives
Its temper and impression. Morning there,
Here eve was well nigh by such passage made;
And whiteness had o'erspread that hemisphere,
Blackness the other part; when to the left
I saw Beatrice turned, and on the sun
Gazing, as never eagle fixed his ken.

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36. Lamp = sun; passages=foci = places on the horizon where the sun rises at the four seasons of the year. 37. That the point of the horizon where the zodiac, the equator, and the equinoctial colure meet, and thus form three crosses. This happens at the spring equinox.

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39. Constellation = Aries, whose influence is especially benign. According to tradition, the world was created at this season.

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41. There Purgatory.

42. Here in the northern hemisphere.

46. The strength of the eagle's eye is proverbial. Cf. "Et sa nature est de esgarder contre le soleil si fermement que si oil ne remuent goute" (B. Latini, Trésor, i. 5, 97), and,

"A lover's eye will gaze an eagle blind." Shakespeare, L. L. Lost, iv. 3.

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That here exceeds our power; thanks to the place
Made for the dwelling of the human kind.

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I suffered it not long; and yet so long,
That I beheld it bickering sparks around,
As iron that comes boiling from the fire.
And suddenly upon the day appeared
A day new-risen; as he, who hath the power,
Had with another sun bedecked the sky.
Her eyes
fast fixed on the eternal wheels,
Beatrice stood unmoved; and I with ken
Fixed upon her, from upward gaze removed,
At her aspect, such inwardly became
As Glaucus, when he tasted of the herb
That made him peer among the ocean gods:
Words may not tell of that transhuman change;
And therefore let the example serve, though weak,
For those whom grace hath better proof in store.
If I were only what thou didst create,
Then newly, Love! by whom the heaven is ruled;
Thou know'st, who by thy light didst bear me up.
Whenas the wheel which thou dost ever guide,
Desired Spirit! with its harmony,

Tempered of thee and measured, charmed mine ear
Then seemed to me so much of heaven to blaze
With the sun's flame, that rain or flood ne'er made
A lake so broad. . The newness of the sound,
And that great light, inflamed me with desire,
Keener than e'er was felt, to know their cause.
Whence she, who saw me, clearly as myself,

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55. Earthly Paradise, where Adam dwelt body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, before his sin.

58. "Ardentem, et scintillas emittentem, ac si ferrum cum de fornace trahitur." Alberici Visio, § 5.

60. As he as if he (God).

62. The heavens.

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I cannot tell: God knoweth.' 2 Cor. xii. 2.

74. The motion of the heavens. The desire for God is the source of the motion of the celestial spheres.

75. The harmony of the spheres.

"In their motion harmony divine

66. A fisherman who, seeing the fish he had So smooths her charming tones, that God's own caught eating the grass and thus recovering life,

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ate himself of it and became immortal. Ovid, Listens delighted." Met. xiii. 898 ff.

70. Whom God shall some day bring to the same experience.

71. Allusion to St. Paul, - "Whether in the

Milton, P. L. v. 627.

77. Dante, gazing into the eyes of Beatrice, has been drawn up to the sphere of fire, which seems to him like a burning lake.

To calm my troubled mind, before I asked,
Opened her lips, and gracious thus began:
"With false imagination thou thyself

Makest dull; so that thou seest not the thing,
Which thou hadst seen, had that been shaken off.
Thou art not on the earth as thou believest;
For lightning, scaped from its own proper place,
Ne'er ran, as thou hast hither now returned.”

Although divested of my first-raised doubt
By those brief words accompanied with smiles,
Yet in new doubt was I entangled more,
And said: "Already satisfied, I rest
From admiration deep; but now admire
How I above those lighter bodies rise."

Whence, after utterance of a piteous sigh,
She towards me bent her eyes, with such a look,
As on her frenzied child a mother casts;
Then thus began: "Among themselves all things
Have order; and from hence the form, which makes
The universe resemble God. In this
The higher creatures see the printed steps
Of that eternal worth, which is the end

Whither the line is drawn. All natures lean,
In this their order, diversely; some more,
Some less approaching to their primal source,
Thus they to different havens are moved on
Through the vast sea of being, and each one
With instinct given, that bears it in its course.
This to the lunar sphere directs the fire;
This moves the hearts of mortal animals;
This the brute earth together knits, and binds.
Nor only creatures, void of intellect,
Are aimed at by this bow; but even those,
That have intelligence and love, are pierced.

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That Providence, who so well orders all,

With her own light makes ever calm the heaven,

In which the substance, that hath greatest speed,
Is turned and thither now, as to our seat
Predestined, we are carried by the force

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Of that strong cord, that never looses dart

85. Dante does not know he has left the earth. footprints of the Deity, who is the beginning 89. Proper place sphere of fire.

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90. Hither heaven, the home of the soul. 96. He cannot understand how he, a heavy body, can rise through air and fire.

97. Piteous, on account of his ignorance and weakness.

99. Frenzied = deliro = delirious.

103. In the divine order the higher creatures (angels and the blessed) see more plainly the

and the end of the universe.

110. All creatures have an instinct to seek God as their end.

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