The Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri

874 PARADISE. Cahto XXIX. You do not think how much it cost of blood To sow it in the world, and what reward Is his, who welcomes it in humble mood. Still for appearance each one struggles hard, And makes his own inventions, which are theme •* For preachers, while the Gospel is debarred. One says that in Christ's dying hour supreme The moon returned back, and interposed So that below could shine not the sun's beam. Others that light within itself inclosed, So that to Spaniards, Indians, and to Jews, To all alike was such eclipse imposed. So many Lapi and Bindi in her stews Florence knows not, as in a year are told Within her pulpits such fallacious views. So that the sheep, all ignorant, to the fold Eetum from pasture only fed with wind. Not pardoned that their loss they ne'er behold. Christ spake not to His followers in this kind, Q-o forth, and preach you fables to the world, But truth for their foundation He assigned : And that so fervently their preaching hurled, That for the battle, true faith to attest Their shield and lance was Gospel truth unfurled. Now they but seek for fine words, and a jest, "* In preaching, and who only wins a smile Swells in his cowl, and asks no further test. But in that cowl what bird does nest the while If by the crowd were seen, they then would see What pardon 'tis they trust in to assoil : For which so grows the foolish greedery. That without any evidence or sign, To every promise does the crowd agree. By this Saint Anthony makes fat his swine, And other things, than swine far worse, beside, Purchased and paid for with unminted coin. But since enough we now have wandered wide. To the straight path henceforth your vision bear, That hastening the lost time may be supplied. Line 102. Taken as the people inhabiting the extreme west, centre, and east of the inhabitable earth. The darkness was universal. Line 103. GQmmon names in Florence: the Smiths and Browns of the place. Line 124. By ihe sale of these false indulgences, *' unminted," not genuine coin, the brothers of Saint Anthony, formed into an independent otder by Boniface YIII., grow rich and support their paramours.

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Cahto XXX. PARADISE. 376 The Angelic nature mounts from star to star ^ In such a multitude, that speech had failed, And mortal thought had never gone so far. And if you look'st on what has been revealed By Daniel, in his thousands you would see That all determinate number is concealed. ^" The primal light which over all does ray Does in a different fashion mingling flow In every splendour, where *tis paired for aye : Whence since to action that conceives, we know The affection corresponds, the dulcet love Germins in each of them with different glow. In future all the height and breadth approve Of the Eternal Worth which thus has rent Itself in all these mirrors spread above, Still as before remaining permanent."

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^ Line 134. Thousand thoasanda ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. — Daniel vii. 10. Line 137. Grod commnnicates His nature differently to eaoh of the myriad Angelio host, so that eaoh one differs from the rest in love and glory.

CANTO XXX. The hierarchies yanish in the height, and Dante, rapt in the ineffiible smile of Beatrice, ascends into the empyrean. There his sight being strengthened by gazing into the river of light, he is able to behold the triumph of the twofold Court of Heaven, the Angels and the souls of the Blessed, spread out Uke a full white rose. Thxse glows, perchance six thousand miles afar, The fervid noon, the while our Tuscan land Strips off the shadow of night's flying car, When the mid sky, the deepest o'er us spanned. Begins to change, that every starry light ^ Loses its semblance where on earth we stand ; And as the handmaid of the sun most bright Advancs onwards, so the Heaven does close, Over each star through aU its infinite. Not otherwise the triumph which arose Ever around that point which me o'erthrew^ Appearing girt by what it does inclose,

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Line 1. Dante compares the disappearance of the hierarchies in the height to the stars vanishing in the sky when it is dawn at Florence and noon six thousand miles away. Line 12. The hierarchies were inclosed in God, though apparently revolving around Him.