"Without decay, without heavy sickness;
with everlasting life, in everlasting triumph
on your going to heaven (joyous the festival)
at the choice age of thirty years."
A thousand years
and six hours of the hours,
without guile, without danger, it has been heard,
Adam was in Paradise.[35]
O God our help, whom champions prove,
who fashioned all with perfect justice,
not bright the matter of our theme (?)[36]
the King who spake an admonition with them.
Prince who gave a clear admonition.
(The figures in brackets after the title of the chapters are the numbers of the poems or cantos in the text.)
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Lit. "share of a festival"; this is one of those chevilles which are frequent in this poem, often introduced without much sense to fill out a line, or to give a rhyming word. We have omitted a few of them in the translation.
[35] There seems to be some error here. According to Gen. v. 3, Adam lived altogether nine hundred and thirty years, as the poet states further on (p. 43).
[36] The meaning of this line is not clear. The above is conjectural.