The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated, Paradise, Complete. Dante Alighieri

With such effulgence blazeth, as sends forth

       All beauteous things eternal. What distils

       Immediate thence, no end of being knows,

       Bearing its seal immutably impress'd.

       Whatever thence immediate falls, is free,

       Free wholly, uncontrollable by power

       Of each thing new: by such conformity

       More grateful to its author, whose bright beams,

       Though all partake their shining, yet in those

       Are liveliest, which resemble him the most.

       These tokens of pre-eminence on man

       Largely bestow'd, if any of them fail,

       He needs must forfeit his nobility,

       No longer stainless. Sin alone is that,

       Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike

       To the chief good; for that its light in him

       Is darken'd. And to dignity thus lost

       Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void,

       He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain.

       Your nature, which entirely in its seed

       Trangress'd, from these distinctions fell, no less

       Than from its state in Paradise; nor means

       Found of recovery (search all methods out

       As strickly as thou may) save one of these,

       The only fords were left through which to wade,

       Either that God had of his courtesy

       Releas'd him merely, or else man himself

       For his own folly by himself aton'd.

       "Fix now thine eye, intently as thou canst,

       On th' everlasting counsel, and explore,

       Instructed by my words, the dread abyss.

       "Man in himself had ever lack'd the means

       Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop

       Obeying, in humility so low,

       As high he, disobeying, thought to soar:

       And for this reason he had vainly tried

       Out of his own sufficiency to pay

       The rigid satisfaction. Then behooved

       That God should by his own ways lead him back

       Unto the life, from whence he fell, restor'd:

       By both his ways, I mean, or one alone.

       But since the deed is ever priz'd the more,

       The more the doer's good intent appears,

       Goodness celestial, whose broad signature

       Is on the universe, of all its ways

       To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none,

       Nor aught so vast or so magnificent,

       Either for him who gave or who receiv'd

       Between the last night and the primal day,

       Was or can be. For God more bounty show'd.

       Giving himself to make man capable

       Of his return to life, than had the terms

       Been mere and unconditional release.

       And for his justice, every method else

       Were all too scant, had not the Son of God

       Humbled himself to put on mortal flesh.

       "Now, to fulfil each wish of thine, remains

       I somewhat further to thy view unfold.

       That thou mayst see as clearly as myself.

       "I see, thou sayst, the air, the fire I see,

       The earth and water, and all things of them

       Compounded, to corruption turn, and soon

       Dissolve. Yet these were also things create,

       Because, if what were told me, had been true

       They from corruption had been therefore free.

       "The angels, O my brother! and this clime

       Wherein thou art, impassible and pure,

       I call created, as indeed they are

       In their whole being. But the elements,

       Which thou hast nam'd, and what of them is made,

       Are by created virtue' inform'd: create

       Their substance, and create the' informing virtue

       In these bright stars, that round them circling move

       The soul of every brute and of each plant,

       The ray and motion of the sacred lights,

       With complex potency attract and turn.

       But this our life the' eternal good inspires

       Immediate, and enamours of itself;

       So that our wishes rest for ever here.

       "And hence thou mayst by inference conclude

       Our resurrection certain, if thy mind

       Consider how the human flesh was fram'd,

       When both our parents at the first were made."

CANTO VIII

       Table of Contents

       The world was in its day of peril dark

       Wont to believe the dotage of fond love

       From the fair Cyprian deity, who rolls

       In her third epicycle, shed on men

       By stream of potent radiance: therefore they

       Of elder time, in their old error blind,

       Not her alone with sacrifice ador'd

       And invocation, but like honours paid

       To Cupid and Dione, deem'd of them

       Her mother, and her son, him whom they feign'd

       To sit in Dido's bosom: and from her,

       Whom I have sung preluding, borrow'd they

       The appellation of that star, which views,

       Now obvious and now averse, the sun.

       I was not ware that I was wafted up

       Into its orb; but the new loveliness

       That grac'd my lady, gave me ample proof

       That we had entered there. And as in flame

       A sparkle is distinct, or voice in voice

       Discern'd, when one its even tenour keeps,

       The other comes and goes; so in that light

       I other luminaries saw, that cours'd

       In circling motion rapid more or less,

       As their eternal phases each impels.

       Never was blast from vapour charged with cold,

       Whether invisible to eye or no,

       Descended with such speed, it had not seem'd

       To linger in dull tardiness, compar'd

       To those celestial lights, that tow'rds us came,

       Leaving the circuit of their joyous ring,