[2] Words appropriate to the entrance of a sinner that repenteth.
CANTO X.
First Ledge: the Proud.—Examples of Humility sculptured on the Rock.
When we were within the threshold of the gate, which the souls’ wrong love[1] disuses, because it makes the crooked way seem straight, I heard by its resounding that it was closed again. And, if I had turned my eyes to it, what excuse would have been befitting for the fault?
[1] It is Dante’s doctrine that love is the motive of every act; rightly directed, of good deeds; perverted, of evil. See Canto XVII.
We were ascending through a cloven rock, which moved on one side and on the other, even as the wave retreats and approaches. “Here must be used a little art,” began my Leader, “in keeping close, now here, now there to the side which recedes.”[1] And this made our progress so slow that the waning disk of the moon regained its bed to go to rest, before we had come forth from that needle’s eye. But when we were free and open above, where the mountain backward withdraws,[2] I weary, and both uncertain of our way, we stopped upon a level more solitary than roads through deserts. The space from its edge, where it borders the void, to the foot of the high bank which rises only, a human body would measure in three lengths; and as far as my eye could stretch its wings, now on the left and now on the right side, such did this cornice seem to me. Thereon our feet had not yet moved when I perceived that bank round about, which, being perpendicular, allowed no ascent, to be of white marble and adorned with such carvings, that not Polycletus merely but Nature would be put to shame there.
[1] The path was a narrow, steep zigzag, which, as it receded on one side and the other, afforded the better foothold.
[2] Leaving an open space, the first ledge of Purgatory.
The Angel who came to earth with the announcement of the peace, wept for for many years, which opened Heaven from its long interdict, appeared before us here carved in a sweet attitude so truly that he did not seem an image that is silent. One would have sworn that he was saying “Ave;” for there was she imaged who turned the key to open the exalted love. And in her action she had these words impressed, “Ecce ancilla Dei!”[1] as exactly as a shape is sealed in wax.
[1] “Behold the handmaid of the Lord!”