The Steep Path and Patient Waiting — Divine Comedy

When one faculty seizes the soul, she collects upon that power alone, and time passes unperceived. Dante finds this true by proof: full fifty steps aloft the sun had measured unobserved of him, while he still listened, before the troop shouts that here is what ye ask. The path they then ascend, solitary, is narrower than a gap a villager stops with a thorn-fork. Sanleo, Noli, Bismantua ask for feet; here a man had need to fly, with the plumes of high desire, and the aid who gave him hope and light.

They climb through broken rock, hands and feet both wanted. On the ridge Dante asks which way. Let no step of thine recede. Behind me gain the mountain, till some practised guide appear. Wearied, he cries that he remains alone if the parent stay not. Thus far put forth thy strength: Virgil points to a circling track. The words spur him until his feet press the circuit plain. They sit and look back east. The sun smites them from the left. Virgil sets Sion and this mount on one horizon, so the path Phaeton ill knew passes here on one side and there on the other. Dante asks how far; the hill outclimbs his sight. Such is this steep: ever difficult at first, but more a man proceeds, less evil grows. When upward going shall be easy as a vessel going down the tide, then of this path thou wilt have reached the end. No more I answer, and thus far for certain know.

A voice offers rest by constraint. Behind a huge stone some stand as if through idleness. One sits much wearied, arms folding his knees, face down. Dante names him more idle than if laziness were sister to him. The man lifts his face: Up then, proceed, thou valiant one. It is Belacqua. Well hast thou discerned how from the left the sun leads. Dante laughs, then asks why he sits: waitest thou escort, or is this thine accustomed way? Of what use to mount, when the bird of God at the portal would not let me pass? Heaven must first bear me round as in life it bore, because I delayed repentant sighs, unless prayer rise from a heart that lives in grace. Virgil is already ascending: Haste thee; the sun has touched meridian, and night covers Marocco's shore.