[2] The first words of the seventh verse of the fifty-first Psalm: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
[3] The drinking of the waters of Lethe which obliterate the memory of sin.
[4] The four Cardinal Virtues.
[5] The Cardinal Virtues lead up to Theology, or the knowledge of Divine things, but the Evangelic Virtues are needed to penetrate within them.
[6] Mode of being,—the divine and the human.
While, full of amazement and glad, my soul was tasting that food which, sating of itself, causes hunger for itself, the other three, showing themselves in their bearing of loftier order, came forward dancing to their angelic melody. “Turn, Beatrice, turn thy holy eyes,” was their song, “upon thy faithful one, who to see thee has taken so many steps. For grace do us the grace that thou unveil to hum thy mouth, so that he may discern the second beauty which thou concealest.”[1]
[1] “The eyes of Wisdom are her demonstrations by which one sees the truth most surely; and her smile is her persuasions in which the interior light of Wisdom is displayed without any veil; and in these two is felt that loftiest pleasure of Beatitude, which is the chief good in Paradise.”—Convito, iii 15.
Oh splendor of living light eternal! Who hath become so pallid under the shadow of Parnassus, or hath so drunk at its cistern, that he would not seem to have his mind encumbered, trying to represent thee as thou didst appear there where in harmony the heaven overshadows thee when in the open air thou didst thyself disclose?
CANTO XXXII.
The Earthly Paradise.—Return of the Triumphal procession.—The Chariot bound to the Mystic Tree.—Sleep of Dante.—His waking to find the Triumph departed.—Transformation of the Chariot.—The Harlot and the Giant.