Of further progress? or what a bait of ease,

Or promise of allurement, led thee on

Elsewhere, that thou elsewhere shouldst rather wait?"

A bitter sigh I drew, then scarce found voice

To answer; hardly to these sounds my lips

Gave utterance, wailing: "Thy fair looks withdrawn,
Things present, with deceitful pleasures, turn'd

My steps aside." She answering spake: "Hadst thou
Been silent, or denied what thou avow'st,

Thou hadst not hid thy sin the more; such eye
Observes it. But whene'er the sinner's cheek
Breaks forth into the precious-streaming tears
Of self-accusing, in our court the wheel
Of justice doth run counter to the edge.2
Howe'er, that thou mayst profit by thy shame
For errors past, and that henceforth more strength
May arm thee, when thou hear'st the Siren-voice;
Lay thou aside the motive to this grief,
And lend attentive ear, while I unfold
How opposite a way my buried flesh

Should have impell'd thee. Never didst thou spy,
In art or nature, aught so passing sweet,

As were the limbs that in their beauteous frame
Enclosed me, and are scatter'd now in dust.
If sweetest thing thus fail'd thee with my death,
What, afterward, of mortal, should thy wish
Have tempted? When thou first hadst felt the dart
Of perishable things, in my departing

For better realms, thy wing thou shouldst have pruned
To follow me; and never stoop'd again,
To 'bide a second blow, for a slight girl,3
Or other gaud as transient and as vain.
The new and inexperienced bird' awaits,
Twice it may be, or thrice, the fowler's aim;
But in the sight of one whose plumes are full,
In vain the net is spread, the arrow wing'd."

"The

2" Counter to the edge." weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender."

3" For a slight girl." "Daniello and Venturi say that this alludes to Gen

tucca of Lucca, mentioned in the twenty-fourth Canto.

4 "Bird." "Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird."Prov. i. 17.

I stood, as children silent and ashamed
Stand, listening, with their eyes upon the earth,
Acknowledging their fault, and self-condemn'd.
And she resumed: "If, but to hear, thus pains thee;
Raise thou thy beard, and lo! what sight shall do."
With less reluctance yields a sturdy holm,
Rent from its fibres by a blast, that blows
From off the pole, or from Iarbas' land,"
Than I at her behest my visage raised:
And thus the face denoting by the beard,
I mark'd the secret sting her words convey'd.
No sooner lifted I mine aspect up,

Than I perceived those primal creatures cease
Their flowery sprinkling; and mine eyes beheld
(Yet unassured and wavering in their view)
Beatrice; she, who toward the mystic shape,
That joins two natures in one form, had turn'd:
And, even under shadow of her veil,

Each thing else, the more

And parted by the verdant rill that flow'd
Between, in loveliness she seem'd as much
Her former self surpassing, as on earth
All others she surpass'd. Remorseful goads
Shot sudden through me.
Its love had late beguiled me, now the more
Was loathsome. On my heart so keenly smote
The bitter consciousness, that on the ground
O'erpower'd I fell: and what my state was then,
She knows, who was the cause. When now my strength
Flow'd back, returning outward from the heart,
The lady, whom alone I first had seen,

I found above me. "Loose me not," she cried:
"Loose not thy hold": and lo! had dragg'd me high
As to my neck into the stream; while she,

Still as she drew me after, swept along,

Swift as a shuttle, bounding o'er the wave.

The blessed shore approaching, then was heard

So sweetly," Tu asperges me," that I

May not remember, much less tell the sound.
The beauteous dame, her arms expanding, clasp'd

"From Iarbas' land." The south.

"The lady." Matilda.

My temples, and immerged me where 'twas fit

The wave should drench me: and, thence raising up, Within the fourfold dance of lovely nymphs

Presented me so laved; and with their arm

They each did cover me. "Here are we nymphs,
And in the heaven are stars.

Was visited of Beatrice, we,

Or ever earth

Appointed for her handmaids, tended on her.
We to her eyes will lead thee: but the light
Of gladness, that is in them, well to scan,
Those yonder three, of deeper ken than ours,
Thy sight shall quicken." Thus began their song:
And then they led me to the Gryphon's breast,
Where, turn'd toward us, Beatrice stood.
"Spare not thy vision. We have station'd thee
Before the emeralds, whence love, erewhile,

Hath drawn his weapons on thee." As they spake,
A thousand fervent wishes riveted

Mine eyes upon her beaming eyes, that stood,
Still fix'd toward the Gryphon, motionless.

As the sun strikes a mirror, even thus
Within those orbs the twifold being shone;
Forever varying, in one figure now
Reflected, now in other. Reader! muse
How wondrous in my sight it seem'd, to mark

A thing, albeit steadfast in itself,

Yet in its imaged semblance mutable.

Full of amaze, and joyous, while my soul. Fed on the viand, whereof still desire Grows with satiety; the other three,

With gesture that declared a loftier line,

Advanced: to their own carol, on they came

Dancing, in festive ring angelical.

"Turn, Beatrice!" was their song: "Oh! turn Thy saintly sight on this thy faithful one, Who, to behold thee, many a wearisome pace

Hath measured. Gracious at our prayer, vouchsafe
Unveiled to him thy cheeks; that he may mark
Thy second beauty, now conceal'd." O splendor!
O sacred light eternal! who is he,

So pale with musing in Pierian shades,
Or with that fount so lavishly imbued,
Whose spirit should not fail him in the essay
To represent thee such as thou didst seem,
When under cope of the still-chiming heaven
Thou gavest to open air thy charms reveal'd?

CANTO XXXII

ARGUMENT.-Dante is warned not to gaze too fixedly on Beatrice. The procession moves on, accompanied by Matilda, Statius, and Dante, till they reach an exceeding lofty tree, where divers strange chances befall.

M'

INE eyes with such an eager coveting

Were bent to rid them of their ten years' thirst,1
No other sense was waking: and e'en they

Were fenced on either side from heed of aught;
So tangled, in its custom'd toils, that smile
Of saintly brightness drew me to itself:
When forcibly, toward the left, my sight
The sacred virgins turn'd; for from their lips
I heard the warning sounds: "Too fix'd a gaze!"
Awhile my vision labor'd; as when late
Upon the o'erstrained eyes the sun hath smote:
But soon, to lesser object, as the view
Was now recover'd (lesser in respect
To that excess of sensible, whence late

I had perforce been sunder'd), on their right
I mark'd that glorious army wheel, and turn,
Against the sun and sevenfold lights, their front.
As when, their bucklers for protection raised,
A well-ranged troop, with portly banners curl'd,
Wheel circling, ere the whole can change their ground,
E'en thus the goodly regiment of heaven,
Proceeding, all did pass us ere the car

Had sloped his beam. Attendant at the wheels
The damsels turn'd; and on the Gryphon moved

1 "Their ten years' thirst." Beatrice had been dead ten years.

The sacred burden, with a pace so smooth,

No feather on him trembled. The fair dame,
Who through the wave had drawn me, companied
By Statius and myself, pursued the wheel,

Whose orbit, rolling, mark'd a lesser arch.

Through the high wood, now void (the more her blame, Who by the serpent was beguiled) I pass'd,

With step in cadence to the harmony
Angelic. Onward had we moved, as far,
Perchance, as arrow at three several flights

Full wing'd had sped, when from her station down
Descended Beatrice. With one voice

All murmur'd "Adam"; circling next a plant
Despoil'd of flowers and leaf, on every bough.
Its tresses, spreading more as more they rose,
Were such, as 'midst their forest wilds, for height,
The Indians might have gazed at. Blessed thou,
Gryphon! 2 whose beak hath never pluck'd that tree
Pleasant to taste: for hence the appetite
Was warp'd to evil." Round the stately trunk
Thus shouted forth the rest, to whom return'd
The animal twice-gender'd: "Yea! for so
The generation of the just are saved."
And turning to the chariot-pole, to foot
He drew it of the widow'd branch, and bound
There, left unto the stock whereon it grew.

As when large floods of radiance from above
Stream, with that radiance mingled, which ascends
Next after setting of the scaly sign,

Our plants then bourgeon, and each wears anew
His wonted colors, ere the sun have yoked
Beneath another star his flamy steeds;

Thus putting forth a hue more faint than rose,
And deeper than the violet, was renew'd
The plant, erewhile in all its branches bare.
Unearthly was the hymn, which then arose.
I understood it not, nor to the end
Endured the harmony. Had I the skill

Gryphon." Our Saviour's submission to the Roman Empire appears to be intended, and particularly his in

junction, to "render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's."