For biting that, in pain and in desire
Five thousand years and more the first-born soul
Craved Him, who punished in himself the bite.
Thy genius slumbers, if it deem it not
For special reason so pre-eminent
In height, and so inverted in its summit.
And if thy vain imaginings had not been
Water of Elsa round about thy mind,
And Pyramus to the mulberry, their pleasure,
Thou by so many circumstances only
The justice of the interdict of God
Morally in the tree wouldst recognize.
But since I see thee in thine intellect
Converted into stone and stained with sin,
So that the light of my discourse doth daze thee,
I will too, if not written, at least painted,
Thou bear it back within thee, for the reason
That cinct with palm the pilgrim’s staff is borne.”
And I: “As by a signet is the wax
Which does not change the figure stamped upon it,
My brain is now imprinted by yourself.
But wherefore so beyond my power of sight
Soars your desirable discourse, that aye
The more I strive, so much the more I lose it?”
“That thou mayst recognize,” she said, “the school
Which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far
Its doctrine follows after my discourse,
And mayst behold your path from the divine
Distant as far as separated is
From earth the heaven that highest hastens on.”