CANTO XXIII

E’en as the bird, who midst the leafy bower
Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night,
With her sweet brood, impatient to descry
Their wished looks, and to bring home their food,
In the fond quest unconscious of her toil: 
She, of the time prevenient, on the spray,
That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze
Expects the sun; nor ever, till the dawn,
Removeth from the east her eager ken;
So stood the dame erect, and bent her glance
Wistfully on that region, where the sun
Abateth most his speed; that, seeing her
Suspense and wand’ring, I became as one,
In whom desire is waken’d, and the hope
Of somewhat new to come fills with delight.

Short space ensued; I was not held, I say,
Long in expectance, when I saw the heav’n
Wax more and more resplendent; and, “Behold,”
Cried Beatrice, “the triumphal hosts
Of Christ, and all the harvest reap’d at length
Of thy ascending up these spheres.”  Meseem’d,
That, while she spake her image all did burn,
And in her eyes such fullness was of joy,
And I am fain to pass unconstrued by.

As in the calm full moon, when Trivia smiles,
In peerless beauty, ‘mid th’ eternal nympus,
That paint through all its gulfs the blue profound
In bright pre-eminence so saw I there,
O’er million lamps a sun, from whom all drew
Their radiance as from ours the starry train: 
And through the living light so lustrous glow’d
The substance, that my ken endur’d it not.

O Beatrice! sweet and precious guide! 
Who cheer’d me with her comfortable words! 
“Against the virtue, that o’erpow’reth thee,
Avails not to resist.  Here is the might,
And here the wisdom, which did open lay
The path, that had been yearned for so long,
Betwixt the heav’n and earth.”  Like to the fire,
That, in a cloud imprison’d doth break out
Expansive, so that from its womb enlarg’d,
It falleth against nature to the ground;
Thus in that heav’nly banqueting my soul
Outgrew herself; and, in the transport lost. 
Holds now remembrance none of what she was.

“Ope thou thine eyes, and mark me:  thou hast seen
Things, that empower thee to sustain my smile.”

I was as one, when a forgotten dream
Doth come across him, and he strives in vain
To shape it in his fantasy again,
Whenas that gracious boon was proffer’d me,
Which never may be cancel’d from the book,
Wherein the past is written.  Now were all
Those tongues to sound, that have on sweetest milk
Of Polyhymnia and her sisters fed
And fatten’d, not with all their help to boot,
Unto the thousandth parcel of the truth,
My song might shadow forth that saintly smile,
flow merely in her saintly looks it wrought. 
And with such figuring of Paradise
The sacred strain must leap, like one, that meets
A sudden interruption to his road. 
But he, who thinks how ponderous the theme,
And that ’t is lain upon a mortal shoulder,
May pardon, if it tremble with the burden. 
The track, our ventrous keel must furrow, brooks
No unribb’d pinnace, no self-sparing pilot.