The Portable Dante (73 page)

could not impress his quality so much upon the universe but that His Word should not remain in infinite excess.

The proof of this is in that first proud one, the highest of all creatures, who plunged down unripe because he would not wait for light;

hence, clearly, every lesser nature is too small a vessel to contain that Good which knows no bounds, whose measure is Itself.

Therefore, our vision which can only be one of the rays that come from that prime Mind which penetrates every created thing,

cannot of its own nature be so weak as not to see that its own Principle is far beyond what our eyes can perceive.

And so the vision granted to your world can no more fathom Justice Everlasting than eyes can see down to the ocean floor:

while you can see the bottom near the shore, you cannot out at sea; but nonetheless it is still there, concealed by depths too deep.

There is no light except from that clear sky forever cloudless—darkness is the rest, the shadow or the poison of the flesh.

Now you can see what hiding place it was concealed from you the truth of living Justice concerning which you were so plagued with doubts;

for you would say: ‘Consider that man born along the Indus where you will not find a soul who speaks or reads or writes of Christ,

and all of his desires, all his acts are good, as far as human reason sees; not ever having sinned in deed or word,

he dies unbaptized, dies without the faith. What is this justice that condemns his soul? What is his guilt if he does not believe?’

Now who are you to sit in judgment’s seat and pass on things a thousand miles away, when you can hardly see beyond your nose?

The man who would argue fine points with me, if holy Scripture were not there to guide us, surely would have serious grounds for doubt.

O earthbound creatures! O thick-headed men! The Primal Will, which of Itself is good, never moves from Itself, the Good Supreme.

Only that which accords with it is just. It is not drawn to any finite good, but sending forth its rays creates that good. ”

Just as the stork once it has fed its young will fly around the nest, and as the chick she fed will raise its head to look at her,

so did that sacred image circle me, those many wills joined there to move its wings, and so did I lift up my head to it.

Circling, it sang, then spoke: “Even as my notes are too high for your mind to comprehend, so is Eternal Judgment for mankind. ”

Those blazing fires of the Holy Spirit stopped still, and then still in that ensign shape which had brought Rome the reverence of the world,

it raised its voice again: “And to this realm none ever rose who had not faith in Christ, before or after he was crucified.

But then there are all those who cry, ‘Christ, Christ!’ and at the Judgment Day will be less close to Him than will be those who know not Christ.

Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn the Day those two assemblies separate, one rich, the other poor forevermore.

What will the Persians say, then, to your kings when they shall see God’s open Book and read what has been written of their infamies?

There they will read, where Albert’s deeds are found, that act already trembling on the pen, which shall lay waste to all the realm of Prague.

There they will read about the Seine’s distress provoked by that debaser of the coin whose death will wear the hide of a wild boar;

there they will read about the thirsting pride by which the Scot and Englishman are maddened, neither content to stay within his bounds.

The book will show the lecherous, soft life of him of Spain, and the Bohemian who knew no valor nor had wish to know;

the book will mark an
I
for all the good the Cripple of Jerusalem has done, and M for all of his perversities;

the book will show the cowardice and greed of him who guards the island of the fire on which Anchises ended his long life,

and just to show how little he was worth, he will be written up in bits of words which will say much in very little space;

and clear to all will be the filthy deeds of his brother and uncle, who cuckold a splendid lineage, a double crown;

and Norway’s king and Portugal’s shall be recorded there, and Rascia’s, who debased the coin of Venice and disgraced himself.

Oh happy Hungary, if she escapes further abuse! Happy Navarre if she but make a rampart of her mountain-chain!

In proof of this let everyone pay heed to Nicosia’s and Famagosta’s lot whose own beast makes them wail and shriek as he

keeps pace with all the others in this pack. ”

When he who floods the whole world with his light has sunk so far beneath our hemisphere that day on every side has disappeared,

the sky which he, the sun, alone had lit before, now suddenly is lit again by many lights, reflections of the one;

I was reminded of this heavenly change the moment that the emblem of the world and of its lords was silent in its beak,

for all those living lights were now ablaze with brighter light as they began their songs, whose fleeting sweetness fades from memory.

O sweetest love which wraps you in its smiles, how ardent was your music from those flutes played with the breath of holy thoughts alone!

And when those precious, light-reflecting jewels with which I saw the sixth planet begemmed imposed silence upon their angel tones,

I seemed to hear the murmur of a stream as its clear waters flow from rock to rock revealing the abundance of its source.

And as at the lute’s neck the sound of notes take form, as does the breath that fills a flute escape as music through an opening,

just so without a moment of delay, the murmur of the eagle seemed to climb up through its neck, as through a hollow space,

where it became a voice, and from the beak emerged the words which I had longed to hear and which are now inscribed upon my heart.

“That part of me which in a mortal eagle sees and endures the sun, ” it said to me, “I want you now to fix your gaze upon.

Of all the fire-souls which give me form the ones that give the eye within my head its brilliant lustre are the worthiest.

He at the center as the pupil’s spark wrote songs inspired by the Holy Spirit and once conveyed the ark from town to town,

and now he knows the value of his psalms so far as his own gifts contributed, for his bliss is commensurate to it.

Of those five souls that form my eyebrow’s arch the one who shines the closest to my beak consoled the widow who had lost her son,

and now he knows from living this sweet life, and having lived its opposite, how dear it costs a man to fail to follow Christ.

He who comes next on the same curving line along the upper arch of which I speak delayed his death by his true penitence,

and now he knows that God’s eternal laws are not changed when a worthy prayer from earth delays today’s events until tomorrow.

The next light went to Greece bearing the laws and me to let the Shepherd take his place— his good intentions bore the worst of fruits;

and now he knows that all the evil sprung from his good action does not harm his soul, though, thereby, all the world has been destroyed.

And at the down sweep of the arch you see that William, mourned for by the land which now deplores the fact that Charles and Frederick live;

and now he knows how much is loved in Heaven a righteous king, and splendidly he makes this clear to all through his effulgence here.

Who in your erring world would have believed that Ripheus of Troy was here, the fifth in this half-circle made of holy lights?

And now he knows much more about God’s grace than anyone on earth and sees more deeply, though even
his
eye cannot probe God’s depths. ”

Then like the lark that soars in spacious skies, singing at first, then silent, satisfied, rapt by the last sweet notes of its own song,

so seemed the emblem satisfied with that reflection of God’s pleasure, by Whose will all things become that which they truly are.

Though my perplexity must have shown through, as color shows clear through a piece of glass, I could no longer bear to hide my doubt—

it burst forth from my lips: “How can this be?”— such was the pressure of its weight—at which I saw a festival of flashing lights.