among guests and family-friends a general unwillingness to move. "Oh, hang it, girls!" would Arthur say; "the parlor is well enough, all right; let it stay as it is, and let a fellow stay where he can do as he pleases and feels at home"; and to this view of the matter would respond divers of the nice young bachelors who were Arthur's and Tom's sworn friends. In fact, nobody wanted to stay in our parlor now. It was a cold, correct, accomplished fact; the household fairies had left it, - and when the fairies leave a room, nobody ever feels at home in it. No pictures, curtains, no wealth of mirrors, no elegance of lounges, can in the least make up for their absence. They are a capricious little set; there are rooms where they will not stay, and rooms where they will; but no one can ever have a good time without them. THREE CANTOS OF DANTE'S "PARADISO." CANTO XXIII. EVEN as a bird, 'mid the beloved leaves, And find the nourishment wherewith to feed them, And with an ardent longing waits the sun, Gazing intent, as soon as breaks the dawn: Even thus my Lady standing was, erect And vigilant, turned round towards the zone Underneath which the sun displays least haste; So that beholding her distraught and eager, Such I became as he is, who desiring For something yearns, and hoping is appeased. And eyes she had so full of ecstasy Who paint the heaven through all its hollow cope, A sun that one and all of them enkindled, Dante is with Beatrice in the eighth circle, that of the fixed stars. She is gazing upwards, watching for the descent of the Triumph of Christ. Under the meridian, or at noon, the shadows being shorter move slower, and therefore the sun seems less in haste. By the beneficent influen ees of the stars. The old belief that the stars were fed by the light of the sun. So Milton,"Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repair, and in their golden urna draw light." Here the stars are souls the sun is Christ. O Beatrice, my gentle guide and dear! She said to me: "That which o'ermasters thee A virtue is which no one can resist. There are the wisdom and omnipotence That oped the thoroughfares 'twixt heaven and earth, Dilating so it finds not room therein, And what became of it cannot remember. It would not reach, singing the holy smile, This which goes cleaving the audacious prow, By whose perfume the good way was selected." As in a sunbeam, that unbroken passes Through fractured cloud, ere now a meadow of flowers So I beheld the multitudinous splendors Beholding not the source of the effulgence. Beatrice speaks. The Muse of harmony and singing. The rose is the Virgin Mary, Rosa mundi, Rosa mystica; the lilies are the Apostlcs and other saints. The struggle between his eyes and the light. O thou benignant power that so imprint'st them! Morning and evening utterly enthralled And cinctured it, and whirled itself about it. On earth, and to itself most draws the soul, Would seem a cloud that, rent asunder, thunders, Compared unto the sounding of that lyre Wherewith was crowned the sapphire beautiful, Which gives the clearest heaven its sapphire hue. "I am Angelic Love, that circle round The joy sublime which breathes from out the bosom And I shall circle, Lady of Heaven, while Thou followest thy Son, and mak'st diviner Thus did the circulated melody Seal itself up; and all the other lights The regal mantle of the volumes all Of that world, which most fervid is and living So very distant, that its outward show, In those resplendent coffers, which had been Christ reascends, that Dante's dazzled eyes, too feeble to bear the light of his presence, may behold the splendors around him. The greater fire is the Virgin Mary, greater than any of those remaining. She is the living star, surpassing in brightness all other souls in heaven, as she did here on earth: Stella Maris, Stella Matutina. The Angel Gabriel, o Angelic Love Sapphire is the color in which the old painters arrayed the Virgin. Christ," the desire of the nations." The regal mantle of all the volumes, or rolling orbs, of the world is the crystalline heaven, or Primum Mobile, which infolds all the others like a mantle. The Virgin ascends to her Son. Easter hymn to the Vir gin. Caring not for gold in the Babylonian exile of this life, they laid up treasures in the other. There triumpheth beneath the exalted Son Both with the ancient council and the new, CANTO XXIV. "O COMPANY elect to the great supper And him somewhat bedew; ye drinking are Made themselves spheres around their steadfast poles, Revolve so that the first to the beholder. Make me esteem them either swift or slow. From that one which I noted of most beauty Beheld I issue forth a fire so happy That none it left there of a greater splendor; And around Beatrice three several times It whirled itself with so divine a song, My fantasy repeats it not to me; Therefore the pen skips, and I write it not, Since our imagination for such folds, Much more our speech, is of a tint too glaring. "O holy sister mine, who us implorest With such devotion, by thine ardent love St. Peter, keeper of the keys, with the holy men of the Old and the New Testament. Beatrice speaks. Hunger and thirst after things divine. The grace of God. The carol was a dance as well as a song. St. Peter thrice encircles Beatrice, as the Angel Gabriel did the Virgin Mary in the preceding canto. Too glaring for painting such delicate draperies of song. St. Peter speaks to Beatrice. Thou dost unbind me from that beautiful sphere!" Thus, having stopped, the beatific fire Unto my Lady did direct its breath, Which spake in fashion as I here have said. And she "O light eterne of the great inan Is hid not from thee; for thou hast thy sight "T is well he have the chance to speak thereof." Fixed upon God, in whom are all things reflected. As baccalaureate arms himself, and speaks not So did I arm myself with every reason, Speak on, good Christian; manifest thyself; Say, what is Faith?" Whereat I raised my brow Prompt signals made to me that I should pour Upon the which is founded the high hope, And it behooveth us from this belief To reason without having other views, Below as doctrine were thus understood, That there resplendent was : "This precious jewel, Whence hadst thou it?" And I: "The large outpouring Of the Holy Spirit, which has been diffused A syllogism is, which demonstrates it With such acuteness, that, compared therewith, St. Peter speaks to Dante The great Head of the Church. In the Scholastic Philos ophy, the essence of a thing distinguishing it from a other things, was called ita quiddity: an answer to the question, Quid est ? The Old and New Testoments. |