Paradise: Cantos 22–27

With associate step the bards
Drew near the plant; and from amidst the leaves
A voice was heard: “Ye shall be chary of me;”

Wond’ring what thus could waste them (for the cause
Of their gaunt hollowness and scaly rind
Appear’d not) lo! a spirit turn’d his eyes
In their deep-sunken cell, and fasten’d then
On me, then cried with vehemence aloud:
“What grace is this vouchsaf’d me?”

I ne’er had recogniz’d him: but the voice
Brought to my knowledge what his cheer conceal’d.
Remembrance of his alter’d lineaments
Was kindled from that spark; and I agniz’d
The visage of Forese.

“Ah! respect
This wan and leprous wither’d skin,” thus he
Suppliant implor’d, “this macerated flesh.
Speak to me truly of thyself. And who
Are those twain spirits, that escort thee there?
Be it not said thou Scorn’st to talk with me.”

“If the power of sinning more
Were first concluded in thee, ere thou knew’st
That kindly grief, which re-espouses us
To God, how hither art thou come so soon?
I thought to find thee lower, there, where time
Is recompense for time.”

“Blessed are they, whom grace
Doth so illume, that appetite in them
Exhaleth no inordinate desire,
Still hung’ring as the rule of temperance wills.”

As one
That makes no pause, but presses on his road,
Whate’er betide him, if some urgent need
Impel: so enter’d we upon our way,
One before other; for, but singly, none
That steep and narrow scale admits to climb.

“If in thy presence I unfold to him
The secrets of heaven’s vengeance, let me plead
Thine own injunction, to exculpate me.”

Then each unite together, one dispos’d
T’ endure, to act the other, through meet frame
Of its recipient mould: that being reach’d,
It ’gins to work, coagulating first;
Then vivifies what its own substance caus’d
To bear.

Then each unite together, one dispos’d
T’ endure, to act the other, through meet frame
Of its recipient mould: that being reach’d,
It ’gins to work, coagulating first;
Then vivifies what its own substance caus’d
To bear.

Here the rocky precipice
Hurls forth redundant flames, and from the rim
A blast upblown, with forcible rebuff
Driveth them back, sequester’d from its bound.

Here the rocky precipice
Hurls forth redundant flames, and from the rim
A blast upblown, with forcible rebuff
Driveth them back, sequester’d from its bound.

“O thou, who followest
The others, haply not more slow than they,
But mov’d by rev’rence, answer me, who burn
In thirst and fire: nor I alone, but these
All for thine answer do more thirst, than doth
Indian or Aethiop for the cooling stream.
Tell us, how is it that thou mak’st thyself
A wall against the sun, as thou not yet
Into th’ inextricable toils of death
Hadst enter’d?”

“Those dulcet lays,” I answer’d, “which, as long
As of our tongue the beauty does not fade,
Shall make us love the very ink that trac’d them.”

"Expect no more
Sanction of warning voice or sign from me,
Free of thy own arbitrement to choose,
Discreet, judicious. To distrust thy sense
Were henceforth error. I invest thee then
With crown and mitre, sovereign o’er thyself."