Saying: "While thou recoverest the sense
  Of seeing which in me thou hast consumed,
  'Tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it.

Begin then, and declare to what thy soul
  Is aimed, and count it for a certainty,
  Sight is in thee bewildered and not dead;

I said: "As pleaseth her, or soon or late
  Let the cure come to eyes that portals were
  When she with fire I ever burn with entered.

The Good, that gives contentment to this Court,
  The Alpha and Omega is of all
  The writing that love reads me low or loud." 

And said: "In verity with finer sieve
  Behoveth thee to sift; thee it behoveth
  To say who aimed thy bow at such a target."

And I: "By philosophic arguments,
  And by authority that hence descends,
  Such love must needs imprint itself in me;

Then to that Essence (whose is such advantage
  That every good which out of it is found
  Is nothing but a ray of its own light)

More than elsewhither must the mind be moved
  Of every one, in loving, who discerns
  The truth in which this evidence is founded.

The voice reveals it of the truthful Author,
  Who says to Moses, speaking of Himself,
  'I will make all my goodness pass before thee.'

Thou too revealest it to me, beginning
  The loud Evangel, that proclaims the secret
  Of heaven to earth above all other edict."

But say again if other cords thou feelest,
  Draw thee towards Him, that thou mayst proclaim
  With how many teeth this love is biting thee."

The holy purpose of the Eagle of Christ
  Not latent was, nay, rather I perceived
  Whither he fain would my profession lead.

The being of the world, and my own being,
  The death which He endured that I may live,
  And that which all the faithful hope, as I do,

With the forementioned vivid consciousness
  Have drawn me from the sea of love perverse,
  And of the right have placed me on the shore.

As soon as I had ceased, a song most sweet
  Throughout the heaven resounded, and my Lady
  Said with the others, "Holy, holy, holy!"

And as at some keen light one wakes from sleep
  By reason of the visual spirit that runs
  Unto the splendour passed from coat to coat, 

So from before mine eyes did Beatrice
  Chase every mote with radiance of her own,
  That cast its light a thousand miles and more.

Whence better after than before I saw,
  And in a kind of wonderment I asked
  About a fourth light that I saw with us.

Even as the bough that downward bends its top
  At transit of the wind, and then is lifted
  By its own virtue, which inclines it upward,

Likewise did I, the while that she was speaking,
  Being amazed, and then I was made bold
  By a desire to speak wherewith I burned. 

Devoutly as I can I supplicate thee
  That thou wouldst speak to me; thou seest my wish;
  And I, to hear thee quickly, speak it not."

Sometimes an animal, when covered, struggles
  So that his impulse needs must be apparent,
  By reason of the wrappage following it;

Then breathed: "Without thy uttering it to me,
  Thine inclination better I discern
  Than thou whatever thing is surest to thee;

For I behold it in the truthful mirror,
  That of Himself all things parhelion makes,
  And none makes Him parhelion of itself. 

And how long to mine eyes it was a pleasure,
  And of the great disdain the proper cause,
  And the language that I used and that I made.

Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree
  Not in itself was cause of so great exile,
  But solely the o'erstepping of the bounds.

And him I saw return to all the lights
  Of his highway nine hundred times and thirty,
  Whilst I upon the earth was tarrying.

The language that I spake was quite extinct
  Before that in the work interminable
  The people under Nimrod were employed;

A natural action is it that man speaks;
  But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave
  To your own art, as seemeth best to you.

Ere I descended to the infernal anguish,
  'El' was on earth the name of the Chief Good,
  From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round.

Upon the mount that highest o'er the wave
  Rises was I, in life or pure or sinful,
  From the first hour to that which is the second,

As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth."