The Secret Splendour

Dante meets Beatrice in Purgatory

(From Purgatorio, Canto XXX)

A woman, white-veiled, crowned with olive, came—

Under the shade of her green mantle, all

 Her body clothed in colour of living flame.

Long years had passed since the first trembling fall

My spirit knew, love-broken in youth's hour

Before her beauty's height, but the same thrall

I stood now, caught by her secret flow of power

And needing not mine eyes to gauge the source

 Of the old mighty love which made me cower.

As soon as on my vision struck the force

That through and through I had felt my boy's heart shake

 I, like a child who seeks his mother and pours

Into her ear his sudden dread or ache,

Cried thus to Virgil as I pressed me nigher:

"Not one small blood-drop mine that does not quake—

 I know the signals of the ancient fire!"

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