HKB
Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom, By all those ways, by all the expedients, Whereby thou hadst the power of doing it.
Preserve towards me thy magnificence, So that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed, Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body.”
Thus I implored; and she, so far away, Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me; Then unto the eternal fountain turned.
And said the Old Man holy: “That thou mayst Accomplish perfectly thy journeying, Whereunto prayer and holy love have sent me,
Fly with thine eyes all round about this garden; For seeing it will discipline thy sight Farther to mount along the ray divine.
And she, the Queen of Heaven, for whom I burn Wholly with love, will grant us every grace, Because that I her faithful Bernard am.”
As he who peradventure from Croatia Cometh to gaze at our Veronica, Who through its ancient fame is never sated,
But says in thought, the while it is displayed, “My Lord, Christ Jesus, God of very God, Now was your semblance made like unto this?”
Even such was I while gazing at the living Charity of the man, who in this world By contemplation tasted of that peace.
“Thou son of grace, this jocund life,” began he, “Will not be known to thee by keeping ever Thine eyes below here on the lowest place;
But mark the circles to the most remote, Until thou shalt behold enthroned the Queen To whom this realm is subject and devoted.”
I lifted up mine eyes, and as at morn The oriental part of the horizon Surpasses that wherein the sun goes down,
Thus, as if going with mine eyes from vale To mount, I saw a part in the remoteness Surpass in splendour all the other front.
And even as there where we await the pole That Phaeton drove badly, blazes more The light, and is on either side diminished,
So likewise that pacific oriflamme Gleamed brightest in the centre, and each side In equal measure did the flame abate.
And at that centre, with their wings expanded, More than a thousand jubilant Angels saw I, Each differing in effulgence and in kind.
I saw there at their sports and at their songs A beauty smiling, which the gladness was Within the eyes of all the other saints;
And if I had in speaking as much wealth As in imagining, I should not dare To attempt the smallest part of its delight.
Bernard, as soon as he beheld mine eyes Fixed and intent upon its fervid fervour, His own with such affection turned to her
That it made mine more ardent to behold.
Paradiso: Canto XXXII
Absorbed in his delight, that contemplator Assumed the willing office of a teacher, And gave beginning to these holy words:
“The wound that Mary closed up and anointed, She at her feet who is so beautiful, She is the one who opened it and pierced it.
Within that order which the third seats make Is seated Rachel, lower than the other, With Beatrice, in manner as thou seest.
Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and her who was Ancestress of the Singer, who for dole Of the misdeed said, ‘Miserere mei,’
Canst thou behold from seat to seat descending Down in gradation, as with each one’s name I through the Rose go down from leaf to leaf.
And downward from the seventh row, even as Above the same, succeed the Hebrew women, Dividing all the tresses of the flower;
Because, according to the view which Faith In Christ had taken, these are the partition By which the sacred stairways are divided.
Upon this side, where perfect is the flower With each one of its petals, seated are Those who believed in Christ who was to come.
Upon the other side, where intersected With vacant spaces are the semicircles, Are those who looked to Christ already come.