And this man was our Patriarch; hence whoever
Doth follow him as he commands can see
That he is laden with good merchandise.
But for new pasturage his flock has grown

So greedy, that it is impossible

They be not scattered over fields diverse; And in proportion as his sheep remote

And vagabond go farther off from him,
More void of milk return they to the fold.
Verily some there are that fear a hurt,

And keep close to the shepherd; but so few,
That little cloth doth furnish forth their hoods.

Now if my utterance be not indistinct,

If thine own hearing hath attentive been,
If thou recall to mind what I have said,

In part contented shall thy wishes be;

For thou shalt see the plant that's chipped away,
And the rebuke that lieth in the words,

'Where well one fattens, if he strayeth not. ́*

CANTO XII.

Soon as the blessed flame had taken up
The final word to give it utterance,
Began the holy millstone to revolve,
And in its gyre had not turned wholly round,
Before another in a ring enclosed it,

And motion joined to motion, song to song;
Song that as greatly doth transcend our Muses,
Our Sirens, in those dulcet clarions,

As primal splendour that which is reflected.
And as are spanned athwart a tender cloud

Two rainbows parallel and like in colour,
When Juno to her handmaid gives command,

(The one without born of the one within,

Like to the speaking of that vagrant one

Whom love consumed as doth the sun the vapours,)

And make the people here, through covenant

God set with Noah, presageful of the world
That shall no more be covered with a flood,

In such wise of those sempiternal roses

The garlands twain encompassed us about,
And thus the outer to the inner answered.

After the dance, and other grand rejoicings,

Both of the singing, and the flaming forth Effulgence with effulgence blithe and tender, Together, at once, with one accord had stopped,

(Even as the eyes, that, as volition moves them, Must needs together shut and lift themselves,) Out of the heart of one of the new lights

There came a voice, that needle to the star
Made me appear in turning thitherward.
And it began: "The love that makes me fair
Draws me to speak about the other leader,
By whom so well is spoken here of mine.
"Tis right, where one is, to bring in the other,
That, as they were united in their warfare,
Together likewise may their glory shine.
The soldiery of Christ, which it had cost

So dear to arm again, behind the standard
Moved slow and doubtful and in numbers few.
When the Emperor who reigneth evermore

Provided for the host that was in peril,

Through grace alone and not that it was worthy ; And, as was said, he to his Bride brought succour

With champions twain, at whose deed, at whose word
The straggling people were together drawn.

Within that region where the sweet west wind

Rises to open the new leaves, wherewith
Europe is seen to clothe herself afresh,
Not far off from the beating of the waves,

Behind which in his long career the sun
Sometimes conceals himself from every man,

Is situate the fortunate Calahorra,

Under protection of the mighty shield
In which the Lion subject is and sovereign.
Therein was born the amorous paramour

Of Christian Faith, the athlete consecrate,
Kind to his own and cruel to his foes;
And when it was created was his mind

Replete with such a living energy,
That in his mother her it made prophetic.

As soon as the espousals were complete

Between him and the Faith at holy font,
Where they with mutual safety dowered each other,

The woman, who for him had given assent,
Saw in a dream the admirable fruit

That issue would from him and from his heirs ;

And that he might be construed as he was,

A spirit from this place went forth to name him With His possessive whose he wholly was. Dominic was he called; and him I speak of

Even as of the husbandman whom Christ Elected to his garden to assist him. Envoy and servant sooth he seemed of Christ, For the first love made manifest in him

Was the first counsel that was given by Christ.

Silent and wakeful many a time was he

Discovered by his nurse upon the ground,

As if he would have said, ́ For this I came.'

O thou his father, Felix verily !

O thou his mother, verily Joanna,

If this, interpreted, means as is said!
Not for the world which people toil for now
In following Ostiense and Taddeo,
But through his longing after the true manna,
He in short time became so great a teacher,

That he began to go about the vineyard,
Which fadeth soon, if faithless be the dresser ;
And of the See, (that once was more benignant
Unto the righteous poor, not through itself,
But him who sits there and degenerates,)
Not to dispense or two or three for six,

Not any fortune of first vacancy,
Non decimas quæ sunt pauperum Dei,

He asked for, but against the errant world
Permission to do battle for the seed,

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Of which these four and twenty plants surround thee

Then with the doctrine and the will together,

With office apostolical he moved,

Like torrent which some lofty vein out-presses;

And in among the shoots heretical

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His impetus with greater fury smote, Wherever the resistance was the greatest. Of him were made thereafter divers runnels,

Whereby the garden catholic is watered, So that more living its plantations stand. If such the one wheel of the Biga was,

In which the Holy Church itself defended
And in the field its civic battle won,
Truly full manifest should be to thee

The excellence of the other, unto whom
Thomas so courteous was before my coming.

But still the orbit, which the highest part

Of its circumference made, is derelict,
So that the mould is where was once the crust.
His family, that had straight forward moved

With feet upon his footprints, are turned round
So that they set the point upon the heel.
And soon aware they will be of the harvest

Of this bad husbandry, when shall the tares
Complain the granary is taken from them.

Yet say I, he who searcheth leaf by leaf

Our volume through, would still some page discover
Where he could read, 'I am as I am wont.'

"Twill not be from Casal nor Acquasparta,

From whence come such unto the written word
That one avoids it, and the other narrows.

Bonaventura of Bagnoregio's life

Am I, who always in great offices
Postponed considerations sinister.

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Here are Illuminato and Agostino,

Who of the first barefooted beggars were

That with the cord the friends of God became.

Hugh of Saint Victor is among them here,

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And Peter Mangiador, and Peter of Spain,
Who down below in volumes twelve is shining;

Nathan the seer, and metropolitan

Chrysostom, and Anselmus, and Donatus
Who deigned to lay his hand to the first art;

Here is Rabanus, and beside me here

Shines the Calabrian Abbot Joachim,

He with the spirit of prophecy endowed.

To celebrate so great a paladin

Have moved me the impassioned courtesy And the discreet discourses of Friar Thomas, And with me they have moved this company."

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CANTO XIII.

LET him imagine, who would well conceive
What now I saw, and let him while I speak
Retain the image as a steadfast rock,
The fifteen stars, that in their divers regions
The sky enliven with a light so great
That it transcends all clusters of the air;

Let him the Wain imagine unto which

Our vault of heaven sufficeth night and day,
So that in turning of its pole it fails not;

Let him the mouth imagine of the horn

That in the point beginneth of the axis
Round about which the primal wheel revolves,—
To have fashioned of themselves two signs in heaven,
Like unto that which Minos' daughter made,
The moment when she felt the frost of death;'

And one to have its rays within the other,

And both to whirl themselves in such a manner That one should forward go, the other backward; And he will have some shadowing forth of that

True constellation and the double dance That circled round the point at which I was; Because it is as much beyond our wont,

As swifter than the motion of the Chiana
Moveth the heaven that all the rest outspeeds.
There sang they neither Bacchus, nor Apollo,

But in the divine nature Persons three,
And in one person the divine and human.
The singing and the dance fulfilled their measure,
And unto us those holy lights gave need,
Growing in happiness from care to care.

Then broke the silence of those saints concordant
The light in which the admirable life
Of God's own mendicant was told to me,
And said: "Now that one straw is trodden out
Now that its seed is garnered up already,
Sweet love invites me to thresh out the other.

Was drawn the rib to form the beauteous cheek
Whose taste to all the world is costing dear,

Into that bosom, thou believest, whence

And into that which, by the lance transfixed,

Before and since, such satisfaction made
That it weighs down the balance of all sin,
Whate'er of light it has to human nature

Been lawful to possess was all infused
By the same power that both of them created;
And hence at what I said above dost wonder,
When I narrated that no second had
The good which in the fifth light is enclosed.

Now ope thine eyes to what I answer thee,

ΤΟ

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And thou shalt see thy creed and my discourse
Fit in the truth as centre in a circle.