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.

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. 

And hereupon my mind was so withdrawn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. 

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?

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.

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.

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." 

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. 

We at the point were where no more ascends
  The stairway upward, and were motionless,
  Even as a ship, which at the shore arrives;

And I gave heed a little, if I might hear
  Aught whatsoever in the circle new;
  Then to my Master turned me round and said:

And he to me: "The love of good, remiss
  In what it should have done, is here restored;
  Here plied again the ill-belated oar;

But still more openly to understand,
  Turn unto me thy mind, and thou shalt gather
  Some profitable fruit from our delay.

The natural was ever without error;
  But err the other may by evil object,
  Or by too much, or by too little vigour.

While in the first it well directed is,
  And in the second moderates itself,
  It cannot be the cause of sinful pleasure;

Hence thou mayst comprehend that love must be
  The seed within yourselves of every virtue,
  And every act that merits punishment.

Now inasmuch as never from the welfare
  Of its own subject can love turn its sight,
  From their own hatred all things are secure; 

Hence if, discriminating, I judge well,
  The evil that one loves is of one's neighbour,
  And this is born in three modes in your clay.

There are, who, by abasement of their neighbour,
  Hope to excel, and therefore only long
  That from his greatness he may be cast down;

And there are those whom injury seems to chafe,
  So that it makes them greedy for revenge,
  And such must needs shape out another's harm.

This threefold love is wept for down below;
  Now of the other will I have thee hear,
  That runneth after good with measure faulty.

If languid love to look on this attract you,
  Or in attaining unto it, this cornice,
  After just penitence, torments you for it.

There's other good that does not make man happy;
  'Tis not felicity, 'tis not the good
  Essence, of every good the fruit and root.

I say not, that thou seek it for thyself."