Divine Comedy: Purgatory | Page 6

plain like a man who turns unto the road which he has lost, and,
till he come to it, seems to himself to go in vain. When we were where
the dew contends with the sun, and, through being in a place where
there is shade, is little
dissipated, my Master softly placed both his
hands outspread upon the grass. Whereon I, who perceived his design,
stretched toward him my tear-stained cheeks. Here he wholly
uncovered that color of mine which hell had hidden on me.[1]
[1] Allegorically, when the soul has entered upon the way of
purification Reason, with the dew of repentance, washes off the stain of
sin, and girds the spirit with humility.
We came, then, to the desert shore that never saw navigate its waters
one who afterwards had experience of return. Here he girt me, even as
pleased the other. O marvel! that such as he plucked the humble plant,
it instantly sprang up again there whence he tore it.[1]
[1] The goods of the spirit are not diminished by appropriation.
CANTO II. Sunrise.--The Poets on the shore.--Coming of a boat,
guided by an angel, bearing souls to Purgatory.--Their

landing.--Casella and his song.--Cato hurries the souls to the mountain.
Now had the sun reached the horizon whose meridian circle covers
Jerusalem with its highest point; and the night which circles opposite to
it was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales that fall from her hand

when she exceeds;[1] so that where I was the white and red cheeks of
the beautiful Aurora by too much age were becoming orange.
[1] Purgatory and Jerusalem are antipodal, and in one direction the
Ganges or India was arbitrarily assumed to be their common horizon.
The night is here taken as the point of the Heavens opposite the sun,
and the sun being in Aries, the night is in Libra. When night exceeds,
that is, at the autumnal equinox, when the night becomes longer than
the day, the Scales may be said to drop from her hand, since the sun
enters Libra.
We were still alongside the sea, like folk who are thinking of their road,
who go in heart and linger in body; and lo! as, at approach of the
morning, through the dense vapors Mars glows ruddy, down in the west
above the ocean floor, such appeared to me,--so may I again behold
it!--a light along the sea coming so swiftly that no flight equals its
motion. From which when I had a little withdrawn my eye to ask my
Leader, again I saw it,
brighter become and larger. Then on each side
of it appeared to me a something, I know not what, white, and beneath,
little by little, another came forth from it. My Master still said not a
word, until the first white things showed themselves wings; then, When
he clearly recognized the pilot, he cried out, "Mind, mind, thou bend
thy knees. Lo! the Angel of God: fold thy hands;
henceforth shalt
thou see such officials. See how he scorns human means, so that he
wills not oar, or other sail than his own wings between such distant
shores. See, how he holds them straight toward heaven, stroking the air
with his eternal feathers that are not changed like mortal hair."
Then, as nearer and nearer toward us came the Bird Divine, the brighter
he appeared; so that near by my eye endured him not, but I bent it down:
and he came on to the shore with a small vessel, very swift and light so
that the water swallowed naught of it. At the stern stood the Celestial
Pilot, such that if but described he would make blessed; and more than
a hundred spirits sat
within. "In exitu Israel de Egypto"[1] they all
were singing together with one voice, with whatso of that psalm is after
written. Then he made the sign of holy cross upon them; whereon they
all threw themselves upon the strand; and he went away swift as he had

come.
1 "When Israel went out of Egypt." Psalm cxiv.
The crowd which remained there seemed strange to the place, gazing
round about like him who of new things makes essay. On all sides the
Sun, who had with his bright arrows chased from
midheaven the
Capricorn,[1] was shooting forth the day, when the new people raised
their brow toward us, saying to us, "If ye know, show us the way to go
unto the mountain." And Virgil
answered, "Ye believe, perchance,
that we are acquainted with this place, but we are pilgrims even as ye
are. Just now we came, a little before you, by another way, which was
so rough and difficult that the ascent henceforth will seem play to us.
[1] When Aries, in which the Sun was rising, is on the horizon,
Capricorn