And I still motionless and against conscience!
When he saw me still stand motionless and obdurate, he said, disturbed a little, “Now see, son, between Beatrice and thee is this wall.”
As at the name of Thisbe, Pyramus, at point of death, opened his eyelids and looked at her, what time the mulberry became vermilion, so, my obduracy becoming softened, I turned me to the wise Leader, hearing the name that in my memory is ever welling up. Whereat he nodded his head, amid said, “How! do we want to stay on this side?” then he smiled as one doth at a child who is conquered by an apple.
Then within the fire he set himself before me, praying Statius, that he would come behind, who previously, on the long road, had divided us. When I was in, into boiling glass I would have thrown myself to cool me, so without measure was the burning there. My sweet Father, to encourage me, went talking ever of Beatrice, saying, “I seem already to see her eyes. A voice was guiding us, which was singing on the other side, and we, ever attentive to it, came forth there where was the ascent. “Venite, benedicti patris mei,”[1] sounded within a light that was there such that it overcame me, and I could not look on it. “The sun departs,” it added, “and the evening comes; tarry not, but hasten your steps so long as the west grows not dark.”
[1] “Come, ye blessed of my Father.”—Matthew, xxv. 34.
The way mounted straight, through the rock, in such direction[1] that I cut off in front of me the rays of the sun which was already low. And of few stairs had we made essay ere, by the vanishing of the shadow, both I and my Sages perceived behind us the setting of the sun. And before the horizon in all its immense regions had become of one aspect, and night had all her dispensations, each of us made of a stair his bed; for the nature of the mountain took from us the power more than the delight of ascending.
[1] Toward the east.
As goats, who have been swift and wayward on the peaks ere they are fed, become tranquil as they ruminate, silent in the shade while the sun is hot, guarded by the herdsman, who on his staff is leaning and, leaning, watches them; and as the shepherd, who lodges out of doors, passes the night beside his quiet flock, watching that the wild beast may not scatter it: such were we all three then, I like a goat, and they hike shepherds, hemmed in on this side and on that by the high rock. Little of the outside could there appear, but through that little I saw the stars both brighter and larger than their wont. Thus ruminating, and thus gazing upon them, sleep overcame me, sleep which oft before a deed be done knows news thereof.
At the hour, I think, when from the east on the mountain first beamed Cytherea, who with fire of love seems always burning, I seemed in dream to see a lady, young and beautiful, going through a meadow gathering flowers, and singing she was saying, “Let him know, whoso asks my name, that I am Leah, and I go moving my fair hands around to make myself a garland. To please me at the glass here I adorn me, but my sister Rachel never withdraws from her mirror, and sits all day. She is as fain to look with her fair eyes as I to adorn me with my hands. Her seeing, and me doing, satisfies.”[1]
[1] Leah and Rachel are the types of the active and the contemplative life.