| |
| O THOU Almighty Father! who dost make | |
| The heavens Thy dwelling, not in bounds confined, | |
| But that, with love intenser, there Thou view’st | |
| Thy primal effluence; hallow’d be thy name: | |
| Join, each created being, to extol | 5 |
| Thy might; for worthy humblest thanks and praise | |
| Is Thy blest Spirit. May Thy kingdom’s peace | |
| Come unto us; for we, unless it come, | |
| With all our striving, thither tend in vain. | |
| As, of their will, the Angels unto Thee | 10 |
| Tender meet sacrifice, circling Thy throne | |
| With loud hosannas; so of theirs be done | |
| By saintly men on earth. Grant us, this day, | |
| Our daily manna, without which he roams | |
| Through this rough desert retrograde, who most | 15 |
| Toils to advance his steps. As we to each | |
| Pardon the evil done us, pardon Thou | |
| Benign, and of our merit take no count. | |
| ’Gainst the old adversary, prove Thou not | |
| Our virtue, easily subdued; but free | 20 |
| From his incitements, and defeat his wiles. | |
| This last petition, dearest Lord! is made | |
| Not for ourselves; since that were needless now; | |
| But for their sakes who after us remain.” | |
| Thus for themselves and us good speed imploring, | 25 |
| Those spirits went beneath a weight like that | |
| We sometimes feel in dreams; all, sore beset, | |
| But with unequal anguish; wearied all; | |
| Round the first circuit; purging as they go | |
| The world’s gross darkness off. In our behoof | 30 |
| If their vows still be offer’d, what can here | |
| For them be vow’d and done by such, whose wills | |
| Have root of goodness in them? Well beseems | |
| That we should help them wash away the stains | |
| They carried hence; that so, made pure and light, | 35 |
| They may spring upward to the starry spheres. | |
| “Ah! so may mercy-temper’d justice rid | |
| Your burdens speedily; that ye have power | |
| To stretch your wing, which e’en to your desire | |
| Shall lift you; as ye show us on which hand | 40 |
| Toward the ladder leads the shortest way. | |
| And if there be more passages than one, | |
| Instruct us of that easiest to ascend: | |
| For this man, who comes with me, and bears yet | |
| The charge of fleshly raiment Adam left him, | 45 |
| Despite his better will, but slowly mounts.” | |
| From whom the answer came unto these words, | |
| Which my guide spake, appear’d not; but ’twas said: | |
| “Along the bank to rightward come with us; | |
| And ye shall find a pass that mocks not toil | 50 |
| Of living man to climb: and were it not | |
| That I am hinder’d by the rock, wherewith | |
| This arrogant neck is tamed, whence needs I stoop | |
| My visage to the ground; him, who yet lives, | |
| Whose name thou speak’st not, him I fain would view; | 55 |
| To mark if e’er I knew him, and to crave | |
| His pity for the fardel that I bear. | |
| I was of Latium; 1 of a Tuscan born, | |
| A mighty one: Aldobrandesco’s name | |
| My sire’s, I know not if ye e’er have heard. | 60 |
| My old blood and forefathers’ gallant deeds | |
| Made me so haughty, that I clean forgot | |
| The common mother; and to such excess | |
| Wax’d in my scorn of all men, that I fell, | |
| Fell therefore; by what fate, Siena’s sons. | 65 |
| Each child in Campagnatico, can tell. | |
| I am Omberto: not me, only, pride | |
| Hath injured, but my kindred all involved | |
| In mischief with her. Here my lot ordains | |
| Under this weight to groan, till I appease | 70 |
| God’s angry justice, since I did it not | |
| Amongst the living, here amongst the dead.” | |
| Listening I bent my visage down: and one | |
| (Not he who spake) twisted beneath the weight | |
| That urged him, saw me, knew me straight, and call’d; | 75 |
| Holding his eyes with difficulty fix’d | |
| Intent upon me, stooping as I went | |
| Companion of their way. “O!” I exclaim’d, | |
| “Art thou not Oderigi? 2 art not thou | |
| Agobbio’s glory, glory of that art | 80 |
| Which they of Paris call the limner’s skill?” | |
| “Brother!” said he, “with tints, that gayer smile, | |
| Bolognian Franco’s 3 pencil lines the leaves. | |
| His all the honour now; my light obscured. | |
| In truth, I had not been thus courteous to him | 85 |
| The whilst I lived, through eagerness of zeal | |
| For that pre-eminence my heart was bent on. | |
| Here, of such pride, the forfeiture is paid. | |
| Nor were I even here, if, able still | |
| To sin, I had not turn’d me unto God. | 90 |
| O powers of man! how vain your glory, nipt | |
| E’en in its height of verdure, if an age | |
| Less bright succeed not. Cimabue thought | |
| To lord it over painting’s field; and now | |
| The cry is Giotto’s, 4 and his name eclipsed. | 95 |
| Thus hath one Guido from the other 5 snatch’d | |
| The letter’d prize: and he, perhaps, is born, | |
| Who shall drive either from their nest. The noise | |
| Of worldly fame is but a blast of wind, | |
| That blows from diverse points, and shifts its name, | 100 |
| Shifting the point it blows from. Shalt thou more | |
| Live in the mouths of mankind, if thy flesh | |
| Part shrivel’d from thee, than if thou hadst died | |
| Before the coral and the pap were left; | |
| Or e’er some thousand years have past? and that | 105 |
| Is, to eternity compared, a space | |
| Briefer than is the twinkling of an eye | |
| To the heaven’s slowest orb. He there, who treads | |
| So leisurely before me, far and wide | |
| Through Tuscany resounded once; and now | 110 |
| Is in Siena scarce with whispers named: | |
| There was he sovereign, when destruction caught | |
| The maddening rage of Florence, in that day | |
| Proud as she now is loathsome. Your renown | |
| Is as the herb, whose hue doth come and go; | 115 |
| And his might withers it, by whom it sprang | |
| Crude from the lap of earth.” I thus to him: | |
| “True are thy sayings: to my heart they breathe | |
| The kindly spirit of meekness, and allay | |
| What tumours rankle there. But who is he, | 120 |
| Of whom thou spakest but now?”—“This,” he replied, | |
| “I Provenzano. He is here, because | |
| He reach’d with grasp presumptuous, at the sway | |
| Of all Siena. Thus he still hath gone, | |
| Thus goeth never-resting, since he died. | 125 |
| Such is the acquittance render’d back of him, | |
| Who, in the mortal life, too much hath dared.” | |
| I then: “If soul, that to life’s verge delays | |
| Repentance, linger in that lower space, | |
| Nor hither mount, (unless good prayers befriend), | 130 |
| Or ever time, long as it lived, be past; | |
| How chanced admittance was vouchsafed to him?” | |
| “When at his glory’s topmost height,” said he, | |
| “Respect of dignity all cast aside, | |
| Freely he fix’d him on Siena’s plain, | 135 |
| A suitor 6 to redeem his suffering friend, | |
| Who languish’d in the prison-house of Charles; | |
| Nor, for his sake, refused through every vein | |
| To tremble. More I will not say; and dark, | |
| I know, my words are; but thy neighbours soon | 140 |
| Shall help thee to a comment on the text. | |
| This is the work, that from these limits freed him.” | |
