Through the celestial forest, whose thick shade attempers the new-springing day with lively green, Dante leaves the bank eager to roam its limits. The ground on all sides breathes delicious odour. A pleasant air that never intermits and never veers smites his temples. Sprays lean trembling toward the part where the holy mountain first casts shade, yet not so disordered that the feathered quiristers lose their art. They welcome the hours of prime, and the melody rolls from branch to branch as along the piney forests on Chiassi's shore when Eolus looses the dripping south. Already his slow steps have carried him so far he cannot ken the place of entry when a rill bounds the path, little rippling waters bending the grass to the left. On earth no wave, how clean soever, would not seem mixed compared with this, transpicuous, clear, yet darkly rolling under perpetual gloom that never admits sun or moonlight.
Feet do not advance. Wondering eyes pass over the streamlet to survey the tender May-bloom flushed through many a hue. Then, as an object that chases every other thought, he beholds a lady all alone, singing, culling flower from flower, her way all over painted. If looks that speak the heart may be trusted, he says, love's own beam warms thee: bend so near that I may list thy song. Beholding thee and this fair place, I call to mind Proserpine, when her mother lost the child and she the bloomy spring. She turns as a lady in a dance, scarce one step before the other, over yellow and vermilion flowers, valing sober eyes, until he catches the dulcet sound. At the limpid waters she raises eyes that shoot a splendour never glanced from Cytherea when her son had sped his keenest weapon. Upon the opposite bank she stands and smiles, shifting through her fingers the intermingling dyes which that lofty land unbosoms without seed. By the stream three paces only sunder them. Yet the Hellespont, where Xerxes passed, a curb forever to the pride of man, was by Leander not more hateful held, for floating between Sestus and Abydos, than this flood is by Dante, because it gave no passage thence.
Strangers ye come, she says, to the place that cradled human nature, and haply view my smiles with suspicion. That sweet strain, Thou Lord hast made me glad, will uncloud your minds. She came prompt to answer every doubt. Dante cannot reconcile the wave and rustling leaves with the report that weather stops below. She unfolds the cause. The First Good, whose joy is only in himself, created man for happiness and gave this goodly place as pledge and earnest of eternal peace. Through his own defect man fell, and for bitterness of sorrow changed laughter unblamed and ever-new delight. The mountain rose so high that vapours cannot ascend to vex the peaceful state. Circumambient air strikes the open summit and makes the umbrageous wood resound; the shaken plant impregnates the voyaging breeze, and the other land conceives trees of various virtue. This holy plain is filled with seeds and bears fruit never plucked on other soil. The water springs not from a vein that spends and repairs, but from a fountain solid, undecaying, sure. On this side it takes away remembrance of offence; on that it brings remembrance back of every good deed done. Hence Lethe here, Eunoe there: both must first be tasted ere they work, the last exceeding all flavours. A corollary she freely gives: they whose verse recorded the golden age had perhaps dreamed of this place. Here was man guiltless, here perpetual spring and every fruit, and this the far-famed nectar. Dante notes a smile in the bards' looks at her conclusion, then turns his face again to the lovely dame.
