When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible; and they now produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he awakes knows himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statius were already up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to be master of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the tried and purified lord over himself.
The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his companions awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil; a sweet unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face; and as the full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, welcomed the morning's radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chiassi, when Eolus lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering melody comes rolling through the forest from bough to bough.[53]
Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless diversities of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in admiration, looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took away every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side of the water, singing and culling flowers.
"Ah, lady!" said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she herself lost the spring-time on earth."
As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with lovely self-possession, and scarcely seeming to put one foot before the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's Hellespont.
The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet was the Lethe of Paradise;—Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.[54] It was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence imagined their golden age;—and at these words she looked at Virgil and Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her kindly words.
Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, "Behold, and listen!" and a light of exceeding lustre came streaming through the woods, followed by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs, and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.
The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and the tears ran down his cheeks.
"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, "weep not that Virgil leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming, at which it will behove thee to weep." Then assuming a sterner attitude, and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech for the last, she added, "Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest, Beatrice indeed;—Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that here only can man be happy?"
Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.