Innocence Once Lost - Religious Classics Collection. Джон Мильтон

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       Before it is, like to a little girl

       Weeping and laughing in her childish sport,

      Issues the simple soul, that nothing knows,

       Save that, proceeding from a joyous Maker,

       Gladly it turns to that which gives it pleasure.

      Of trivial good at first it tastes the savour;

       Is cheated by it, and runs after it,

       If guide or rein turn not aside its love.

      Hence it behoved laws for a rein to place,

       Behoved a king to have, who at the least

       Of the true city should discern the tower.

      The laws exist, but who sets hand to them?

       No one; because the shepherd who precedes

       Can ruminate, but cleaveth not the hoof;

      Wherefore the people that perceives its guide

       Strike only at the good for which it hankers,

       Feeds upon that, and farther seeketh not.

      Clearly canst thou perceive that evil guidance

       The cause is that has made the world depraved,

       And not that nature is corrupt in you.

      Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was

       Two suns to have, which one road and the other,

       Of God and of the world, made manifest.

      One has the other quenched, and to the crosier

       The sword is joined, and ill beseemeth it

       That by main force one with the other go,

      Because, being joined, one feareth not the other;

       If thou believe not, think upon the grain,

       For by its seed each herb is recognized.

      In the land laved by Po and Adige,

       Valour and courtesy used to be found,

       Before that Frederick had his controversy;

      Now in security can pass that way

       Whoever will abstain, through sense of shame,

       From speaking with the good, or drawing near them.

      True, three old men are left, in whom upbraids

       The ancient age the new, and late they deem it

       That God restore them to the better life:

      Currado da Palazzo, and good Gherardo,

       And Guido da Castel, who better named is,

       In fashion of the French, the simple Lombard:

      Say thou henceforward that the Church of Rome,

       Confounding in itself two governments,

       Falls in the mire, and soils itself and burden."

      "O Marco mine," I said, "thou reasonest well;

       And now discern I why the sons of Levi

       Have been excluded from the heritage.

      But what Gherardo is it, who, as sample

       Of a lost race, thou sayest has remained

       In reprobation of the barbarous age?"

      "Either thy speech deceives me, or it tempts me,"

       He answered me; "for speaking Tuscan to me,

       It seems of good Gherardo naught thou knowest.

      By other surname do I know him not,

       Unless I take it from his daughter Gaia.

       May God be with you, for I come no farther.

      Behold the dawn, that through the smoke rays out,

       Already whitening; and I must depart—

       Yonder the Angel is—ere he appear."

      Thus did he speak, and would no farther hear me.

      XVII. Dante's Dream of Anger. The Fourth Circle: The Slothful. Virgil's Discourse of Love.

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      Remember, Reader, if e'er in the Alps

       A mist o'ertook thee, through which thou couldst see

       Not otherwise than through its membrane mole,

      How, when the vapours humid and condensed

       Begin to dissipate themselves, the sphere

       Of the sun feebly enters in among them,

      And thy imagination will be swift

       In coming to perceive how I re-saw

       The sun at first, that was already setting.

      Thus, to the faithful footsteps of my Master

       Mating mine own, I issued from that cloud

       To rays already dead on the low shores.

      O thou, Imagination, that dost steal us

       So from without sometimes, that man perceives not,

       Although around may sound a thousand trumpets,

      Who moveth thee, if sense impel thee not?

       Moves thee a light, which in the heaven takes form,

       By self, or by a will that downward guides it.

      Of her impiety, who changed her form

       Into the bird that most delights in singing,

       In my imagining appeared the trace;

      And hereupon my mind was so withdrawn

       Within itself, that from without there came

       Nothing that then might be received by it.

      Then reigned within my lofty fantasy

       One crucified, СКАЧАТЬ