For those on earth can much advance us here.”
Purgatorio: Canto IV
Whenever by delight or else by pain,
That seizes any faculty of ours,
Wholly to that the soul collects itself,
It seemeth that no other power it heeds;
And this against that error is which thinks
One soul above another kindles in us.
And hence, whenever aught is heard or seen
Which keeps the soul intently bent upon it,
Time passes on, and we perceive it not,
Because one faculty is that which listens,
And other that which the soul keeps entire;
This is as if in bonds, and that is free.
Of this I had experience positive
In hearing and in gazing at that spirit;
For fifty full degrees uprisen was
The sun, and I had not perceived it, when
We came to where those souls with one accord
Cried out unto us: “Here is what you ask.”
A greater opening ofttimes hedges up
With but a little forkful of his thorns
The villager, what time the grape imbrowns,
Than was the passage-way through which ascended
Only my Leader and myself behind him,
After that company departed from us.