The Divine Procession Arrives — Divine Comedy

Singing as if enamoured, she resumes and closes with Blessed they whose sins are covered. Like wood-nymphs tripping singly, one eager for the sun and one escaping it, she moves against the current up the verdant rivage. Dante pursues with as tardy a step. Not a hundred paces, and the bank bending equally lets him face the orient. She turns: my brother, look and hearken. A sudden lustre runs across the great forest, so bright he doubts whether lightning were abroad; but lightning expires, and this endures and waxes. A sweet melody runs through the luminous air. Then he chides the hardihood of the first parent: earth stood in obedience to the heavens, and she only, woman, the creature of an hour, endured not restraint of any veil. Had she borne it devoutly, joys ineffable as these had from the first, and long time since, been his.

Suspense, he walks through primy sweets that never fade, expectant of beatitude more high. The air under the green boughs glows like a blazing fire, and the song grows distinct. He craves Helicon and Urania for things that almost mock thought. Onward, what seemed seven trees of gold the distance falsely presented. Nearer, when no lineament is lost, reason distinguishes tapers of gold, and in the singing traces Hosanna. Their garniture flames with more ample lustre than the full moon at midnight. He turns in wonder to his guide; Virgil's countenance is charged with no less amazement. The lofty things come so slowly the bride would have outstripped them on her bridal day. The lady calls aloud: why thus yet burns affection in thee for these living lights, and dost not look on that which follows them?

He marks a tribe behind, clothed in a whiteness never seen on earth. On his left the watery gleam gives him back, as in a mirror, his left side. He chooses a station on the river's edge, the stream alone separating him, and stays for clearer prospect. The flames go onward, painting the air with a trail of the seven listed colours of sun-bow and moon-zone. Ten paces part the outermost gonfalons. Beneath that sky come four-and-twenty elders, two and two, crowned with flower-de-luces, singing Blessed be thou among the daughters of Adam. After them, as light in heaven seconds light, four animals crowned with verdure, each with six wings full of eyes. Read Ezekiel, he says, and John for the pennons. The space they enclose holds a triumphal car on two wheels, drawn at a Gryphon's neck. As bird, the members are golden; the rest white with vermeil interveined. No car in Rome of Augustus or Africanus, nor the sun's own, poor to this. Three nymphs circle the right wheel, ruddy, emerald, and snow; a purple quaternion at the other, one with three eyes. In rear, two old men, one a counsellor, one appalling with a sword; four of humble seeming; one sleeping old man with a shrewd visage, all wreathed with roses as if on fire above the brow. When the car is over against him, a thundering is heard. At that voice the chosen multitude stay. With the first ensigns they make solemn halt.