# Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 3/Canto 26

While I was doubting for my vision quenched,  Out of the flame refulgent that had quenched it  Issued a breathing, that attentive made me,
Saying: "While thou recoverest the sense  Of seeing which in me thou hast consumed,  'Tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it.
Begin then, and declare to what thy soul  Is aimed, and count it for a certainty,  Sight is in thee bewildered and not dead;
Because the Lady, who through this divine  Region conducteth thee, has in her look  The power the hand of Ananias had."
I said: "As pleaseth her, or soon or late  Let the cure come to eyes that portals were  When she with fire I ever burn with entered.
The Good, that gives contentment to this Court,  The Alpha and Omega is of all  The writing that love reads me low or loud."
The selfsame voice, that taken had from me  The terror of the sudden dazzlement,  To speak still farther put it in my thought;
And said: "In verity with finer sieve  Behoveth thee to sift; thee it behoveth  To say who aimed thy bow at such a target."
And I: "By philosophic arguments,  And by authority that hence descends,  Such love must needs imprint itself in me;
For Good, so far as good, when comprehended  Doth straight enkindle love, and so much greater  As more of goodness in itself it holds;
Then to that Essence (whose is such advantage  That every good which out of it is found  Is nothing but a ray of its own light)
More than elsewhither must the mind be moved  Of every one, in loving, who discerns  The truth in which this evidence is founded.
Such truth he to my intellect reveals  Who demonstrates to me the primal love  Of all the sempiternal substances.
The voice reveals it of the truthful Author,  Who says to Moses, speaking of Himself,  'I will make all my goodness pass before thee.'
Thou too revealest it to me, beginning  The loud Evangel, that proclaims the secret  Of heaven to earth above all other edict."
And I heard say: "By human intellect  And by authority concordant with it,  Of all thy loves reserve for God the highest.
But say again if other cords thou feelest,  Draw thee towards Him, that thou mayst proclaim  With how many teeth this love is biting thee."
The holy purpose of the Eagle of Christ  Not latent was, nay, rather I perceived  Whither he fain would my profession lead.
Therefore I recommenced: "All of those bites  Which have the power to turn the heart to God  Unto my charity have been concurrent.
The being of the world, and my own being,  The death which He endured that I may live,  And that which all the faithful hope, as I do,
With the forementioned vivid consciousness  Have drawn me from the sea of love perverse,  And of the right have placed me on the shore.
The leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden  Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love  As much as he has granted them of good."
As soon as I had ceased, a song most sweet  Throughout the heaven resounded, and my Lady  Said with the others, "Holy, holy, holy!"
And as at some keen light one wakes from sleep  By reason of the visual spirit that runs  Unto the splendour passed from coat to coat,
And he who wakes abhorreth what he sees,  So all unconscious is his sudden waking,  Until the judgment cometh to his aid,
So from before mine eyes did Beatrice  Chase every mote with radiance of her own,  That cast its light a thousand miles and more.
Whence better after than before I saw,  And in a kind of wonderment I asked  About a fourth light that I saw with us.
And said my Lady: "There within those rays  Gazes upon its Maker the first soul  That ever the first virtue did create."
Even as the bough that downward bends its top  At transit of the wind, and then is lifted  By its own virtue, which inclines it upward,
Likewise did I, the while that she was speaking,  Being amazed, and then I was made bold  By a desire to speak wherewith I burned.
And I began: "O apple, that mature  Alone hast been produced, O ancient father,  To whom each wife is daughter and daughter-in-law,
Devoutly as I can I supplicate thee  That thou wouldst speak to me; thou seest my wish;  And I, to hear thee quickly, speak it not."
Sometimes an animal, when covered, struggles  So that his impulse needs must be apparent,  By reason of the wrappage following it;
And in like manner the primeval soul  Made clear to me athwart its covering  How jubilant it was to give me pleasure.
Then breathed: "Without thy uttering it to me,  Thine inclination better I discern  Than thou whatever thing is surest to thee;
For I behold it in the truthful mirror,  That of Himself all things parhelion makes,  And none makes Him parhelion of itself.
Thou fain wouldst hear how long ago God placed me  Within the lofty garden, where this Lady  Unto so long a stairway thee disposed.
And how long to mine eyes it was a pleasure,  And of the great disdain the proper cause,  And the language that I used and that I made.
Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree  Not in itself was cause of so great exile,  But solely the o'erstepping of the bounds.
There, whence thy Lady moved Virgilius,  Four thousand and three hundred and two circuits  Made by the sun, this Council I desired;
And him I saw return to all the lights  Of his highway nine hundred times and thirty,  Whilst I upon the earth was tarrying.
The language that I spake was quite extinct  Before that in the work interminable  The people under Nimrod were employed;
For nevermore result of reasoning  (Because of human pleasure that doth change,  Obedient to the heavens) was durable.
A natural action is it that man speaks;  But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave  To your own art, as seemeth best to you.
Ere I descended to the infernal anguish,  'El' was on earth the name of the Chief Good,  From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round
'Eli' he then was called, and that is proper,  Because the use of men is like a leaf  On bough, which goeth and another cometh.
Upon the mount that highest o'er the wave  Rises was I, in life or pure or sinful,  From the first hour to that which is the second,
As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth."