Purgatorio: Canto XXXIII

“Oh God, the heathen have come,” the ladies were singing in alternation, now three now four, beginning a sweet psalmody, and weeping,

and Beatrice, sighing and pitying, listened to them, overcome by it so

that Mary at the Cross was scarcely more so. But after the other virgins gave her place to speak, she rose onto her feet and was the color of fire as she answered,

“A little while and you will not see me,” and again, “my belovéd sisters, a little while and you will see me.”

Then she put all seven in front of her, and behind her, simply beckoning, she put me, and the lady, and the sage who remained there.

So she went on, and I do not believe that she had set a tenth step on the ground before she struck upon my eyes with her own,

and with a tranquil look, “Come more quickly,” she said to me, “so that if I speak to you you will be well placed to listen to me.”

Once I was with her, as I was meant to be, she said to me, “Brother, why do you not venture to question me, now while you come with me?”

As those who are too reverent, speaking in the presence of persons greater than they are, cannot bring the voice to their teeth still living,

so it happened to me, and with only part of a sound I began, “My lady, you know what my need is, and what is good for it.”

And she said to me, “From here on I would have you disengage yourself from fear and shame so that you no longer speak like a man in a dream.

Know that the vessel which the serpent broke was and is not; but let the one at fault believe that God’s vengeance cannot be frightened off.

Not for all time will the eagle be without an heir, who left the feathers on the chariot which became a monster and a prey.

For I see clearly and so tell of it: there are stars near us already bringing us, undeterred by obstacle or barrier,

a time when a five hundred, ten, and five whom God will send, will slaughter the whore and the giant who offends with her.

And it may be that my somber story, like Themis and the Sphinx, is harder to believe because it darkens the mind as they do,

but events, before long, will be the Naiads that will solve this hard enigma without flocks or harvests being paid for it.

Take note exactly as my words are said by me; teach them to those who are living a life that is a race they are running toward death.

And when you come to write it, bear in mind not to keep back what you have seen of the tree and how, twice over here, it has been ruined.

Whoever robs it, or whoever harms it with an act of blasphemy, offends God who for his own sole use made it sacred.

For a bite of it, in craving and torment five thousand years and more the first soul longed for Him who in Himself punished that taste.

Your intelligence is asleep if it does not think there is a singular reason for its height and for its reversal at the top,

and if thoughts turning in your mind had not been the water of Elsa, and your delight in them a Pyramus to the mulberry,

from such circumstances alone the justice of God would have been known morally, in the forbidding of the tree.

But since I see that your mind has been turned to stone, and has acquired a stony hue so that the light of my speech dazzles you

I would have you also carry it away within you, painted even if not written, as palm wreathes the pilgrim’s staff, and for the same reason.”

And I, “As wax under the seal, that does not alter the figure that is stamped into it, you are imprinted now upon my brain.

But...