Innocence Once Lost - Religious Classics Collection. Джон Мильтон

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      XXI. The Poet Statius. Praise of Virgil.

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      The natural thirst, that ne'er is satisfied

       Excepting with the water for whose grace

       The woman of Samaria besought,

      Put me in travail, and haste goaded me

       Along the encumbered path behind my Leader

       And I was pitying that righteous vengeance;

      And lo! in the same manner as Luke writeth

       That Christ appeared to two upon the way

       From the sepulchral cave already risen,

      A shade appeared to us, and came behind us,

       Down gazing on the prostrate multitude,

       Nor were we ware of it, until it spake,

      Saying, "My brothers, may God give you peace!"

       We turned us suddenly, and Virgilius rendered

       To him the countersign thereto conforming.

      Thereon began he: "In the blessed council,

       Thee may the court veracious place in peace,

       That me doth banish in eternal exile!"

      "How," said he, and the while we went with speed,

       "If ye are shades whom God deigns not on high,

       Who up his stairs so far has guided you?"

      And said my Teacher: "If thou note the marks

       Which this one bears, and which the Angel traces

       Well shalt thou see he with the good must reign.

      But because she who spinneth day and night

       For him had not yet drawn the distaff off,

       Which Clotho lays for each one and compacts,

      His soul, which is thy sister and my own,

       In coming upwards could not come alone,

       By reason that it sees not in our fashion.

      Whence I was drawn from out the ample throat

       Of Hell to be his guide, and I shall guide him

       As far on as my school has power to lead.

      But tell us, if thou knowest, why such a shudder

       Erewhile the mountain gave, and why together

       All seemed to cry, as far as its moist feet?"

      In asking he so hit the very eye

       Of my desire, that merely with the hope

       My thirst became the less unsatisfied.

      "Naught is there," he began, "that without order

       May the religion of the mountain feel,

       Nor aught that may be foreign to its custom.

      Free is it here from every permutation;

       What from itself heaven in itself receiveth

       Can be of this the cause, and naught beside;

      Because that neither rain, nor hail, nor snow,

       Nor dew, nor hoar-frost any higher falls

       Than the short, little stairway of three steps.

      Dense clouds do not appear, nor rarefied,

       Nor coruscation, nor the daughter of Thaumas,

       That often upon earth her region shifts;

      No arid vapour any farther rises

       Than to the top of the three steps I spake of,

       Whereon the Vicar of Peter has his feet.

      Lower down perchance it trembles less or more,

       But, for the wind that in the earth is hidden

       I know not how, up here it never trembled.

      It trembles here, whenever any soul

       Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves

       To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it.

      Of purity the will alone gives proof,

       Which, being wholly free to change its convent,

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