XVII. Dante's Dream of Anger. The Fourth Circle: The Slothful. Virgil's Discourse of Love.

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      Remember, Reader, if e'er in the Alps

       A mist o'ertook thee, through which thou couldst see

       Not otherwise than through its membrane mole,

      How, when the vapours humid and condensed

       Begin to dissipate themselves, the sphere

       Of the sun feebly enters in among them,

      And thy imagination will be swift

       In coming to perceive how I re-saw

       The sun at first, that was already setting.

      Thus, to the faithful footsteps of my Master

       Mating mine own, I issued from that cloud

       To rays already dead on the low shores.

      O thou, Imagination, that dost steal us

       So from without sometimes, that man perceives not,

       Although around may sound a thousand trumpets,

      Who moveth thee, if sense impel thee not?

       Moves thee a light, which in the heaven takes form,

       By self, or by a will that downward guides it.

      Of her impiety, who changed her form

       Into the bird that most delights in singing,

       In my imagining appeared the trace;

      And hereupon my mind was so withdrawn

       Within itself, that from without there came

       Nothing that then might be received by it.

      Then reigned within my lofty fantasy

       One crucified, disdainful and ferocious

       In countenance, and even thus was dying.

      Around him were the great Ahasuerus,

       Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai,

       Who was in word and action so entire.

      And even as this image burst asunder

       Of its own self, in fashion of a bubble

       In which the water it was made of fails,

      There rose up in my vision a young maiden

       Bitterly weeping, and she said: "O queen,

       Why hast thou wished in anger to be naught?

      Thou'st slain thyself, Lavinia not to lose;

       Now hast thou lost me; I am she who mourns,

       Mother, at thine ere at another's ruin."

      As sleep is broken, when upon a sudden

       New light strikes in upon the eyelids closed,

       And broken quivers ere it dieth wholly,

      So this imagining of mine fell down

       As soon as the effulgence smote my face,

       Greater by far than what is in our wont.

      I turned me round to see where I might be,

       When said a voice, "Here is the passage up;"

       Which from all other purposes removed me,

      And made my wish so full of eagerness

       To look and see who was it that was speaking,

       It never rests till meeting face to face;

      But as before the sun, which quells the sight,

       And in its own excess its figure veils,

       Even so my power was insufficient here.

      "This is a spirit divine, who in the way

       Of going up directs us without asking,

       And who with his own light himself conceals.

      He does with us as man doth with himself;

       For he who sees the need, and waits the asking,

       Malignly leans already tow'rds denial.

      Accord we now our feet to such inviting,

       Let us make haste to mount ere it grow dark;

       For then we could not till the day return."

      Thus my Conductor said; and I and he

       Together turned our footsteps to a stairway;

       And I, as soon as the first step I reached,

      Near me perceived a motion as of wings,

       And fanning in the face, and saying, "'Beati

       Pacifici,' who are without ill anger."

      Already over us were so uplifted

       The latest sunbeams, which the night pursues,

       That upon many sides the stars appeared.

      "O manhood mine, why dost thou vanish so?"

       I said within myself; for I perceived

       The vigour of my legs was put in truce.

      We at the point were where no more ascends

       The stairway upward, and were motionless,

       Even as a ship, which