Canzone: Of Angels
I
HE that is Lord of all the realms of light
Hath unto me from His magnificence
Granted such vision as hath wrought my joy.
Moving my spirit past the last defence
That shieldeth mortal things from mightier sight,
Where freedom of the soul knows no alloy,
I saw what forms the lordly powers employ;
Three splendours, saw I, of high holiness,
From clarity to clarity ascending
Through all the roofless, tacit courts extending
In æther which such subtle light doth bless
As ne’er the candles of the stars hath wooed;
Know ye herefrom of their similitude.
II
Withdrawn within the cavern of his wings,
Grave with the joy of thoughts beneficent,
And finely wrought and durable and clear
If so his eyes showed forth the mind’s content,
So sate the first to whom remembrance clings,
Tissued like bat’s wings did his wings appear,
Not of that shadowy colouring and drear,
But as thin shells, pale saffron, luminous;
Alone, unlonely, whose calm glances shed
Friend’s love to strangers though no word were said,
Pensive his godly state he keepeth thus.
Not with his surfaces his power endeth,
But is as flame that from the gem extendeth.
III
My second marvel stood not in such ease,
But he, the cloudy pinioned, winged him on
Then from my sight as now from memory,
The courier aquiline, so swiftly gone!
The third most glorious of these majesties
Give aid, O sapphires of th’ eternal see,
And by your light illume pure verity.
That azure feldspar hight the microcline,
Or, on its wing, the Menelaus weareth
Such subtlety of shimmering as beareth
This marvel onward through the crystalline,
A splendid calyx that about her gloweth,
Smiting the sunlight on whose ray she goeth.
IV
The diver at Sorrento from beneath
The vitreous indigo, who swiftly riseth,
By will and not by action as it seemeth,
Moves not more smoothly, and no thought surmiseth
How she takes motion from the lustrous sheath
Which, as the trace behind the swimmer, gleameth
Yet presseth back the æther where it streameth.
To her whom it adorns this sheath imparteth
The living motion from the light surrounding;
And thus my nobler parts, to grief’s confounding,
Impart into my heart a peace which starteth
From one round whom a graciousness is cast
Which clingeth in the air where she hath past.
V.—TORNATA
Canzon, to her whose spirit seems in sooth
Akin unto the feldspar, since it is
So clear and subtle and azure, I send thee, saying:
That since I looked upon such potencies
And glories as are here inscribed in truth,
New boldness hath o’erthrown my long delaying,
And that thy words my new-born powers obeying—
Voices at last to voice my heart’s long mood—
Are come to greet her in their amplitude.
Note. This form is not Provençal, but that of Dante’s matchless “Voi che intendendo il terzo ciel movete.” Il Convito, II, bar the decasyllabic lines which one can scarcely escape in English but which do not, despite all statements to the contrary, correspond to the hendecasyllabic lines in the Italian.