Rachel (THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE) also figures in the heavenly scene which Virgil recounts.

Virgil explains all this and reproaches Dante: how can he hesitate longer when such heavenly powers are concerned for him, and Virgil himself has promised to lead him safely?

Dante understands at once that such forces cannot fail him, and his spirits rise in joyous anticipation.

The light was departing. The brown air drew down
all the earth’s creatures, calling them to rest
from their day-roving, as I, one man alone,

prepared myself to face the double war
of the journey and the pity, which memory
shall here set down, nor hesitate, nor err.

O Muses! O High Genius! Be my aid!
O Memory, recorder of the vision,
here shall your true nobility be displayed!

Thus I began: “Poet, you who must guide me,
before you trust me to that arduous passage,
look to me and look through me—can I be worthy?

You sang how the father of Sylvius, while still
in corruptible flesh won to that other world,
crossing with mortal sense the immortal sill. (15)

But if the Adversary of all Evil
weighing his consequence and who and what
should issue from him, treated him so wellthat

cannot seem unfitting to thinking men,
since he was chosen father of Mother Rome
and of her Empire by God’s will and token.

Both, to speak strictly, were founded and foreknown
as the established Seat of Holiness
for the successors of Great Peter’s throne.

In that quest, which your verses celebrate,
he learned those mysteries from which arose
his victory and Rome’s apostolate.

There later came the chosen vessel, Paul,
bearing the confirmation of that Faith
which is the one true door to life eternal. (30)

But I—how should I dare? By whose permission?
I am not Aeneas. I am not PauL
Who could believe me worthy of the vision?

How, then, may I presume to this high quest
and not fear my own brashness? You are wise
and will grasp what my poor words can but suggest.”

As one who unwills what he wills, will stay
strong purposes with feeble second thoughts
until he spells all his first zeal away—

so I hung back and balked on that dim coast
till thinking had worn out my enterprise,
so stout at starting and so early lost.

“I understand from your words and the look in your eyes,”
that shadow of magnificence answered me,
“your soul is sunken in that cowardice (45)

that bears down many men, turning their course
and resolution by imagined perils,
as his own shadow turns the frightened horse.

To free you of this dread I will tell you all
of why I came to you and what I heard
when first I pitied you. I was a soul

among the souls of Limbo, when a Lady
so blessed and so beautiful, I prayed her
to order and command my will, called to me.

Her eyes were kindled from the lamps of Heaven.
Her voice reached through me, tender, sweet, and low.
An angel’s voice, a music of its own:

‘O gracious Mantuan whose melodies
live in earth’s memory and shall live on
till the last motion ceases in the skies, (60)

my dearest friend, and fortune’s foe, has strayed
onto a friendless shore and stands beset
by such distresses that he turns afraid

from the True Way, and news of him in Heaven
rumors my dread he is already lost.
I come, afraid that I am too-late risen.

Fly to him and with your high counsel, pity,
and with whatever need be for his good
and soul’s salvation, help him, and solace me.

It is I, Beatrice, who send you to him.
I come from the blessed height for which I yearn.
Love called me here. When amid Seraphim

I stand again before my Lord, your praises
shall sound in Heaven.’ She paused, and I began:
‘O Lady of that only grace that raises (75)

feeble mankind within its mortal cycle
above all other works God’s will has placed
within the heaven of the smallest circle;

so welcome is your command that to my sense,
were it already fulfilled, it would yet seem tardy.
I understand, and am all obedience.

But tell me how you dare to venture thus
so far from the wide heaven of your joy
to which your thoughts yearn back from this abyss.’

‘Since what you ask,’ she answered me, ‘probes near
the root of all, I will say briefly only
how I have come through Hell’s pit without fear.

Know then, O waiting and compassionate soul,
that is to fear which has the power to harm,
and nothing else is fearful even in Hell. (90)

I am so made by God’s all-seeing mercy
your anguish does not touch me, and the flame
of this great burning has no power upon me.

There is a Lady in Heaven so concerned
for him I send you to, that for her sake
the strict decree is broken. She has turned

and called Lucia to her wish and mercy
saying: ‘Thy faithful one is sorely pressed;
in his distresses I commend him to thee.’

Lucia, that soul of light and foe of all
cruelty, rose and came to me at once
where I was sitting with the ancient Rachel,

saying to me: ‘Beatrice, true praise of God,
why dost thou not help him who loved thee so
that for thy sake he left the vulgar crowd? (105)

Dost thou not hear his cries? Canst thou not see
the death he wrestles with beside that river
no ocean can surpass for rage and fury?

No soul of earth was ever as rapt to seek
its good or flee its injury as I was—
when I had heard my sweet Lucia speak-

to descend from Heaven and my blessed seat
to you, laying my trust in that high speech
that honors you and all who honor it.’

She spoke and turned away to hide a tear
that, shining, urged me faster. So I came
and freed you from the beast that drove you there,

blocking the near way to the Heavenly Height.
And now what ails you? Why do you lag? Why
this heartsick hesitation and pale fright (120)

when three such blessed Ladies lean from Heaven
in their concern for you and my own pledge
of the great good that waits you has been given?”

As flowerlets drooped and puckered in the night
turn up to the returning sun and spread
their petals wide on his new warmth and light—

just so my wilted spirits rose again
and such a heat of zeal surged through my veins
that I was born anew. Thus I began:

“Blesséd be that Lady of infinite pity,
and blesséd be thy taxed and courteous spirit
that came so promptly on the word she gave thee.

Thy words have moved my heart to its first purpose.
My Guide! My Lord! My Master! Now lead on:
one will shall serve the two of us in this.” (135)

He turned when I had spoken, and at his back
I entered on that hard and perilous track.

Notes

13-30. AENEAS AND THE FOUNDING OF ROME.

Here is a fair example of the way in which Dante absorbed pagan themes into his Catholicism.

According to Virgil, Aeneas is the son of mortal Anchises and of Venus. Venus, in her son’s interest, secures a prophecy and a promise from Jove to the effect that Aeneas is to found a royal line that shall rule the world. After the burning of Troy, Aeneas is directed by various signs to sail for the Latian lands (Italy) where his destiny awaits him. After many misadventures, he is compelled (like Dante) to descend to the underworld of the dead. There he finds his father’s shade, and there he is shown the shades of the great kings that are to stem from him. (Aeneid VI, 921 ff.) Among them are Romulus, Julius Caesar, and Augustus Caesar. The full glory of the Roman Empire is also foreshadowed to him.

Dante, however, continues the Virgilian theme and includes in the predestination not only the Roman Empire but the Holy Roman Empire and its Church. Thus what Virgil presented as an arrangement of Jove, a concession to the son of Venus, becomes part of the divine scheme of the Catholic God, and Aeneas is cast as a direct forerunner of Peter and Paul.

13. father of Sylvius: Aeneas.

51-52. I was a soul among the souls in Limbo: See Canto IV, lines 31-45, where Virgil explains his state in HelL

78. the heaven of the smallest circle: The moon.