Sins against God, who for his use alone
Creating hallow'd it. For taste of this,
In pain and in desire, five thousand years 1
And upward, the first soul did yearn for him
Who punish'd in himself the fatal gust.

66

Thy reason slumbers, if it deem this height, And summit thus inverted,2 of the plant,

Without due cause: and were not vainer thoughts,
As Elsa's numbing waters,3 to thy soul.

And their fond pleasures had not dyed it dark
As Pyramus the mulberry; thou hadst seen,+
In such momentous circumstance alone,
God's equal justice morally implied

In the forbidden tree. But since I mark thee,
In understanding, harden'd into stone,

And, to that hardness, spotted too and stain'd,
So that thine eye is dazzled at my word;

I will, that, if not written, yet at least
Painted thou take it in thee, for the cause,

That one brings home his staff inwreathed with palm." 5

1 Five thousand years.] That such was the opinion of the church, Lombardi shows by a reference to Baronius. Martyr. Rom. Dec. 25. Anno a creatione mundi, quando a principio creavit Deus cœlum et terram, quinquies millesimo centesimo nonagesimo-Jesus Christus-conceptus. Edit. Col. Agripp. 4to, 1610, p. 858.

2 Inverted.] The branches, unlike those of other trees, spreading more widely the higher they rose. See the last Canto, v. 39.

3 Elsa's numbing waters.] The Elsa, a little stream, which flows into the Arno about twenty miles below Florence, is said to possess a petrifying quality. Fazio degli Uberti, at the conclusion of Cap. viii. 1. 3, of the Dittamondo, mentions a successful experiment he had himself made of the property here attributed to it.

4 Thou hadst seen.] This is obscure. But it would seem as if he meant to inculcate his favourite doctrine of the inviolability of the empire, and of the care taken by Providence to protect it.

5 That one brings home his staff inwreathed with palm.] "For the same cause that the palmer, returning from Palestine, brings home his staff, or bourdon, bound with palm," that is, to show where he has been.

Che si reca 'l bordon di palma cinto.

'It is to be understood," says our Poet in the Vita Nuova, § 41,

I thus: "As wax by seal, that changeth not Its impress, now is stamp'd my brain by thee. But wherefore soars thy wish'd-for speech so high Beyond my sight, that loses it the more,

The more it strains to reach it?"-" To the end That thou mayst know," she answer'd straight, "the school,

That thou hast follow'd; and how far behind,
When following my discourse, its learning halts :
And mayst behold your art,1 from the divine
As distant, as the disagreement is

"Twixt earth and heaven's most high and rapturous orb."

"I not remember," I replied, "that e'er I was estranged from thee; nor for such fault Doth conscience chide me.' Smiling she return'd: "If thou canst not remember, call to mind How lately thou hast drunk of Lethe's wave; And, sure as smoke doth indicate a flame, In that forgetfulness itself conclude

"that people, who go on the service of the Most High, are properly named in three ways. They are named palmers, inasmuch as they go beyond sea, from whence they often bring back the palm. Inasmuch as they go to the house of Galicia, they are called pilgrims; because the sepulchre of St. James was further from his country than that of any other Apostle. They are called Romei," (for which I know of no other word we have in English except Roamers,)" inasmuch as they go to Rome." "In regard to the word bourdon, why it has been applied to a pilgrim's staff, it is not easy to guess. I believe, however, that this name has been given to such sort of staves, because pilgrims usually travel and perform their pilgrimages on foot, their staves serving them instead of horses or mules, then called bourdons and bourdones, by writers in the middle ages. Mr. Johnes's Translation of Joinville's Memoirs, Dissertation xv., by M. du Cange, p. 152, 4to edit. The word is thrice used by Chaucer in the Romaunt of the Rose.

1 Mayst behold your art.] The second persons, singular and plural, are here used intentionally by our author, the one referring to himself alone, the second to mankind in general. Compare Hell, xi. 107. But I will follow the example of Brunck, who in a note on a passage in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, v. 369, where a similar distinction requires to be made, says that it would be ridiculous to multiply instances in a matter so well known.

Blame from thy alienated will incurr'd.
From henceforth, verily, my words shall be
As naked, as will suit them to appear

In thy unpractised view." More sparkling now,
And with retarded course, the sun possess'd
The circle of mid-day, that varies still
As the aspect varies of each several clime;
When, as one, sent in vaward of a troop
For escort, pauses, if perchance he spy
Vestige of somewhat strange and rare; so paused
The sevenfold band, arriving at the verge
Of a dun umbrage hoar, such as is seen,
Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches, oft
To overbrow a bleak and alpine cliff.

And, where they stood, before them, as it seem'd,
I, Tigris and Euphrates both, beheld

2

Forth from one fountain issue; and, like friends,
Linger at parting. "O enlightening beam!
O glory of our kind! beseech thee say

What water this, which, from one source derived,
Itself removes to distance from itself?"

To such entreaty answer thus was made: "Entreat Matilda, that she teach thee this." And here, as one who clears himself of blame

1

1 So paused.] Lombardi imagines that the seven nymphs, who represent the four cardinal and the three evangelical virtues, are made to stop at the verge of the shade, because retirement is the friend of every virtuous quality and spiritual gift.

21, Tigris and Euphrates.]

Quaque caput rapido tollit cum Tigride magnus
Euphrates, quos non diversis fontibus edit

Persis.

Lucan, Phars. lib. iii. 258.

Tigris et Euphrates uno se fonte resolvunt.

Boetius, de Consol. Philosoph. lib. v. Metr. 1.

-là oltre ond' esce

D'un medesimo fonte Eufrate e Tigre.

Petrarca, Son. Mie Venturo, etc.

Imputed, the fair dame return'd: "Of me
He this and more hath learnt; and I am safe
That Lethe's water hath not hid it from him."
And Beatrice: "Some more pressing care,
That oft the memory 'reaves, perchance hath made
His mind's eye dark. But lo, where Eunoe flows!
Lead thither; and, as thou art wont, revive
His fainting virtue." As a courteous spirit,
That proffers no excuses, but as soon

As he hath token of another's will,

Makes it his own; when she had ta'en me, thus
The lovely maiden moved her on, and call'd
To Statius, with an air most lady-like :

"Come thou with him." Were further space
allow'd,

1

Then, Reader! might I sing, though but in part,
That beverage, with whose sweetness I had ne'er
Been sated. But, since all the leaves are full,
Appointed for this second strain, mine art
With warning bridle checks me. I return'd
From the most holy wave, regenerate,

E'en

'en as new plants renew'd1 with foliage new,
Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars.2

1 Renew'd.]

come piante novelle

Rinnovellate da novella fronda.

So new this new-borne knight to battle new did rise

Spenser, Faery Queene, b. i. c. xi. st. 34.
"Rinnovellate" is another of those words which Chaucer in vain
endeavoured to introduce into our language from the Italian, unless
it be supposed that he rather borrowed it from the French. Certes
ones a yere at the lest way it is lawful to ben houseled, for sothely
ones a yere all things in the earth renovelen."

[2 See note to last line of the Hell.]

The Persone's Tale.