Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers Volume I Part 16

But Beatrice said, "Why dost thou so enamour thee of this face, and lose the sight of the beautiful guide, blossoming beneath the beams of Christ? Behold the rose, in which the Word was made flesh.[40] Behold the lilies, by whose odour the way of life is tracked."

Dante looked, and gave battle to the sight with his weak eyes.[41]

As flowers on a cloudy day in a meadow are suddenly lit up by a gleam of sunshine, he beheld mult.i.tudes of splendours effulgent with beaming rays that smote on them from above, though he could not discern the source of the effulgence. He had invoked the name of the Virgin when he looked; and the gracious fountain of the light had drawn itself higher up within the heaven, to accommodate the radiance to his faculties. He then beheld the Virgin herself bodily present,--her who is fairest now in heaven, as she was on earth; and while his eyes were being painted with her beauty,[42] there fell on a sudden a seraphic light from heaven, which, spinning into a circle as it came, formed a diadem round her head, still spinning, and warbling as it spun. The sweetest melody that ever drew the soul to it on earth would have seemed like the splitting of a thunder-cloud, compared with the music that sung around the head of that jewel of Paradise.[43]

"I am Angelic Love," said the light, "and I spin for joy of the womb in which our Hope abided; and ever, O Lady of Heaven, must I thus attend thee, as long as thou art pleased to attend thy Son, journeying in his loving-kindness from sphere to sphere."

All the other splendours now resounded the name of Mary. The Virgin began ascending to pursue the path of her Son; and Dante, unable to endure her beauty as it rose, turned his eyes to the angelical callers on the name of Mary, who remained yearning after her with their hands outstretched, as a babe yearns after the bosom withdrawn from his lips.

Then rising after her themselves, they halted ere they went out of sight, and sung "O Queen of Heaven" so sweetly, that the delight never quitted the air.

A flame now approached and thrice encircled Beatrice, singing all the while so divinely, that the poet could retain no idea expressive of its sweetness. Mortal imagination cannot unfold such wonder. It was Saint Peter, whom she had besought to come down from his higher sphere, in order to catechise and discourse with her companion on the subject of faith.

The catechising and the discourse ensued, and were concluded by the Apostle's giving the poet the benediction, and encircling his forehead thrice with his holy light. "So well," says Dante, "was he pleased with my answers."[44]

"If ever," continued the Florentine, "the sacred poem to which heaven and earth have set their hands, and which for years past has wasted my flesh in the writing, shall prevail against the cruelty that shut me out of the sweet fold in which I slept like a lamb, wishing harm to none but the wolves that beset it,--with another voice, and in another guise than now, will I return, a poet, and standing by the fount of my baptism, a.s.sume the crown that belongs to me; for I there first entered on the faith which gives souls to G.o.d; and for that faith did Peter thus encircle my forehead."[45]

A flame enclosing Saint James now succeeded to that of Saint Peter, and after greeting his predecessor as doves greet one another, murmuring and moving round, proceeded to examine the mortal visitant on the subject of Hope. The examination was closed amidst resounding anthems of,"

Let their hope be in thee;"[46] and a third apostolic flame ensued, enclosing Saint John, who completed the catechism with the topic of Charity. Dante acquitted himself with skill throughout; the spheres resounded with songs of "Holy, holy," Beatrice joining in the warble; and the poet suddenly found Adam beside him. The parent of the human race knew by intuition what his descendant wished to learn of him; and manifesting his a.s.sent before he spoke, as an animal sometimes does by movements and quiverings of the flesh within its coat, corresponding with its good-will,[47] told him, that his fall was not owing to the fruit which he tasted, but to the violation of the injunction not to taste it; that he remained in the Limbo on h.e.l.l-borders upwards of five thousand years; and that the language he spoke had become obsolete before the days of Nimrod.

The gentle fire of Saint Peter now began to a.s.sume an awful brightness, such as the planet Jupiter might a.s.sume, if Mars and it were birds, and exchanged the colour of their plumage.[48] Silence fell upon the celestial choristers; and the Apostle spoke thus:

"Wonder not if thou seest me change colour. Thou wilt see, while I speak, all which is round about us colour in like manner. He who usurps my place on earth,--_my_ place, I say,--ay, _mine_,--which before G.o.d is now vacant,--has converted the city in which my dust lies buried into a common-sewer of filth and blood; so that the fiend who fell from hence rejoices himself down there."

At these words of the Apostle the whole face of Heaven was covered with a blush, red as dawn or sunset; and Beatrice changed colour, like a maiden that shrinks in alarm from the report of blame in another. The eclipse was like that which took place when the Supreme died upon the Cross.

Saint Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully changed than his appearance:

"Not for the purpose of being sold for money was the spouse of Christ fed and nourished with my blood, and with the blood of Linus,--the blood of Cletus. s.e.xtus did not bleed for it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor Urban; men, for whose deaths all Christendom wept. They died that souls might be innocent and go to Heaven. Never was it intention of ours, that the sitters in the holy chair should divide one half of Christendom against the other; should turn my keys into ensigns of war against the faithful; and stamp my very image upon mercenary and lying doc.u.ments, which make me, here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think of. Arm of G.o.d, why sleepest thou? Men out of Gascony and Cahors are even now making ready to drink our blood. O lofty beginning, to what vile conclusion must thou come! But the high Providence, which made Scipio the sustainer of the Roman sovereignty of the world, will fail not its timely succour. And thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal clothing must again descend to earth, see thou that thou openest thy mouth, and hidest not from others what has not been hidden from thyself."

As white and thick as the snows go streaming athwart the air when the sun is in Capricorn, so the angelical spirits that had been gathered in the air of Saturn streamed away after the Apostle, as he turned with the other saints to depart; and the eyes of Dante followed them till they became viewless.[49]

The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to herself; and at the same instant the two companions found themselves in the ninth Heaven or _Primum Mobile_, the last of the material Heavens, and the mover of those beneath it.

[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush, and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy invective awful.

Here he had a glimpse of the divine essence, in likeness of a point of inconceivably sharp brightness enringed with the angelic hierarchies.

All earth, and heaven, and nature, hung from it. Beatrice explained many mysteries to him connected with that sight; and then vehemently denounced the false and foolish teachers that quit the authority of the Bible for speculations of their own, and degrade the preaching of the gospel with ribald jests, and legends of Saint Anthony and his pig.[50]

Returning, however, to more celestial thoughts, her face became so full of beauty, that Dante declares he must cease to endeavour to speak of it, and that he doubts whether the sight can ever be thoroughly enjoyed by any save its Maker.[51] Her look carried him upward as before, and he was now in the Empyrean, or region of Pure Light;--of light made of intellect full of love; love of truth, full of joy; joy, transcendant above all sweetness.

Streams of living radiance came rushing and flashing round about him, swathing him with light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and dashes against the blinded eyes; but the light was love here, and instead of injuring, gave new power to the object it embraced.

With this new infusion of strength into his organs of vision, Dante looked, and saw a vast flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendours, and pouring down like a river between banks painted with the loveliest flowers. Fiery living sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched themselves into the cups of the flowers, where they remained awhile, like rubies set in gold; till inebriated with the odours, they recast themselves into the bosom of the flood; and ever as one returned, another leaped forth. Beatrice bade him dip his eyes into the light, that he might obtain power to see deeper into its nature; for the river, and the jewels that sprang out of it to and fro, and the laughing flowers on the banks, were themselves but shadows of the truth which they included; not, indeed, in their essential selves, but inasmuch as without further a.s.sistance the beholder's eyes could not see them as they were. Dante rushed to the stream as eagerly as the lips of an infant to the breast, when it has slept beyond its time; and his eyelashes had no sooner touched it, than the length of the river became a breadth and a circle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him, like a face when a mask is taken off. It was the whole two combined courts of Heaven, the angelical and the human, in circ.u.mference larger than would hold the sun, and all blazing beneath a light, which was reflected downwards in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mobile below it, the mover of the universe. And as a green cliff by the water's side seems to delight in seeing itself reflected from head to foot with all its verdure and its flowers; so, round about on all sides, upon thousands of thrones, the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat beholding themselves in the light. And yet even all these together formed but the lowest part of the spectacle, which ascended above them, tier upon tier, in the manner of an immeasurable rose,--all dilating itself, doubling still and doubling, and all odorous with the praises of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base of it, as into the yellow of the flower, with a dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Beatrice drew forward her companion, and said, "Behold the innumerable a.s.semblage of the white garments! Behold our city, how large its circuit! Behold our seats, which are, nevertheless, so full, that few comers are wanted to fill them! On that lofty one at which thou art looking, surmounted with the crown, and which shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry, who would fain set Italy right before she is prepared for it.[52] The blind waywardness of which ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who, while he is dying of hunger, kicks away his nurse. And Rome is governed by one that cannot walk in the same path with such a man, whatever be the road.[53] But G.o.d will not long endure him. He will be thrust down into the pit with Simon Magus; and his feet, when he arrives there, will thrust down the man of Alagna still lower.[54]"

In the form, then, of a white rose the blessed mult.i.tude of human souls lay manifest before the eyes of the poet; and now he observed, that the winged portion of the blest, the angels, who fly up with their wings nearer to Him that fills them with love, came to and fro upon the rose like bees; now descending into its bosom, now streaming back to the source of their affection. Their faces were all fire, their wings golden, their garments whiter than snow. Whenever they descended on the flower, they went from fold to fold, fanning their loins, and communicating the peace and ardour which they gathered as they gave.

Dante beheld all,--every flight and action of the whole winged mult.i.tude,--without let or shadow; for he stood in the region of light itself, and light has no obstacle where it is deservedly vouchsafed.

"Oh," cries the poet, "if the barbarians that came from the north stood dumb with amazement to behold the magnificence of Rome, thinking they saw unearthly greatness in the Lateran, what must I have thought, who had thus come from human to divine, from time to eternity, from the people of Florence to beings just and sane?"

Dante stood, without a wish either to speak or to hear. He felt like a pilgrim who has arrived within the place of his devotion, and who looks round about him, hoping some day to relate what he sees. He gazed upwards and downwards, and on every side round about, and saw movements graceful with every truth of innocence, and faces full of loving persuasion, rich in their own smiles and in the light of the smiles of others.

He turned to Beatrice, but she was gone;--gone, as a messenger from herself told him, to resume her seat in the blessed rose, which the messenger accordingly pointed out. She sat in the third circle from the top, as far from Dante as the bottom of the sea is from the region of thunder; and yet he saw her as plainly as if she had been close at hand.

He addressed words to her of thanks for all she had done for him, and a hope for her a.s.sistance after death; and she looked down at him and smiled.

The messenger was St. Bernard. He bade the poet lift his eyes higher; and Dante beheld the Virgin Mary sitting above the rose, in the centre of an intense redness of light, like another dawn. Thousands of angels were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all the blessed.

At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful--she that opened the wound which Mary closed; and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice; and at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then Judith, then Rebecca, then Ruth, ancestress of him out of whose penitence came the song of the Miserere;[55] and so other Hebrew women, down all the gradations of the flower, dividing, by the line which they made, the Christians who lived before Christ from those who lived after; a line which, on the opposite side of the rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders of the Church, at the top of whom was John the Baptist. The rose also was divided horizontally by a step which projected beyond the others, and underneath which, known by the childishness of their looks and voices, were the souls of such as were too young to have attained Heaven by a.s.sistance of good works.

St. Bernard then directed his companion to look again at the Virgin, and gather from her countenance the power of beholding the face of Christ as G.o.d. Her aspect was flooded with gladness from the spirits around her; while the angel who had descended to her on earth now hailed her above with "Ave, Maria!" singing till the whole host of Heaven joined in the song. St. Bernard then prayed to her for help to his companion's eyesight. Beatrice, with others of the blest, was seen joining in the prayer, their hands stretched upwards; and the Virgin, after benignly looking on the pet.i.tioners, gazed upwards herself, shewing the way with her own eyes to the still greater vision. Dante then looked also, and beheld what he had no words to speak, or memory to endure.

He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness that ever trickled to his heart.

Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted, attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld, concentrated in one spot--written in one volume of Love--all which is diffused, and can become the subject of thought and study throughout the universe--all substance and accident and mode--all so compounded that they become one light. He thought he beheld at one and the same time the oneness of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies; because, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and in the course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak of it.

But thoughts as well as words failed him; and though ever afterwards he could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he could take defect for completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain it, still the utmost he could say of what he remembered would fall as short of right speech as the sounds of an infant's tongue while it is murmuring over the nipple; for the more he had looked at that light, the more he found in it to amaze him, so that his brain toiled with the succession of the astonishments. He saw, in the deep but clear self-subsistence, three circles of three different colours of the same breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from both.[56]

O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so understanding, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.

The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted by its own colours with the likeness of a human face.[57]

But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathematician experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to discover the principle by which he is to square it.

He did, however, in a manner discern it. A flash of light was vouchsafed him for the purpose; but the light left him no power to impart the discernment; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift. Desire became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the stars.[58]

[Footnote 1: A curious and happy image.

"Tornan de' nostri visi le postille Debili s, che perla in bianca fronte Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille: Tali vid' io piu facce a parlar p.r.o.nte." ]

[Footnote 2: "Rodolfo da Tossignano, _Hist. Seraph. Relig._ P. i. p.

138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda: 'Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage against his virgin sister, having joined with him Farinata, an infamous a.s.sa.s.sin, and twelve other abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then, tearing off her religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was smitten with leprosy, so as to strike grief and horror into the beholders; and thus, in a few days, through the divine disposal, she pa.s.sed with a palm of virginity to the Lord. Perhaps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being able to certify himself entirely of this occurrence, has chosen to pa.s.s it over discreetly, by making Piccarda say, 'G.o.d knows how, after that, my life was framed.'"--_Cary_, ut sup. p. 137.]

[Footnote 3: A lovely simile indeed.

"Tanto lieta Ch' arder parea d'amor nel primo foco."

[Footnote 4: Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus taken out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor Frederick the Second.

"She was fifty years old or more at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting from Muratori and others); "and because it was not credited that she could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion; and it was given out, that any lady who pleased was at liberty to see her. Many came and saw her, and the suspicion ceased."--_Translation of Dante_, ut sup. p. 137.]

[Footnote 5: Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings.]

[Footnote 6:

"Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth Superill.u.s.trans claritate tua Felices ignes horum Malahoth."

_Malahoth_; Hebrew, _kingdoms_.]

[Footnote 7: The epithet is not too strong, as will be seen by the nature of the inhabitants.]