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(From Paradise, Canto XII) Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
WITHIN that region where the sweet west-wind | |
| Rises to open the new leaves, wherewith | |
| Europe is seen to clothe herself afresh, | |
| Not far off from the beating of the waves, | |
| Behind which in his long career the sun | 5 |
| Sometimes conceals himself from every man, | |
| Is situate the fortunate Calahorra, | |
| Under protection of the mighty shield | |
| In which the Lion subject is and sovereign. | |
| Therein was born the amorous paramour | 10 |
| Of Christian Faith, the athlete consecrate, | |
| Kind to his own and cruel to his foes; | |
| And when it was created was his mind | |
| Replete with such a living energy, | |
| That in his mother her it made prophetic. | 15 |
| As soon as the espousals were complete | |
| Between him and the Faith at holy font, | |
| Where they with mutual safety dowered each other, | |
| The woman, who for him had given assent, | |
| Saw in a dream the admirable fruit | 20 |
| That issue would from him and from his heirs; | |
| And that he might be construed as he was, | |
| A spirit from this place went forth to name him | |
| With His possessive whose he wholly was. | |
| Dominic was he called; and him I speak of | 25 |
| Even as of the husbandman whom Christ | |
| Elected to his garden to assist him. | |
| Envoy and servant sooth he seemed of Christ, | |
| For the first love made manifest in him | |
| Was the first counsel that was given by Christ. | 30 |
| Silent and wakeful many a time was he | |
| Discovered by his nurse upon the ground, | |
| As if he would have said, “For this I came.” | |
| O thou his father, Felix verily! | |
| O thou his mother, verily Joanna, | 35 |
| If this, interpreted, means as is said! | |
| Not for the world which people toil for now | |
| In following Ostiense and Taddeo, | |
| But through his longing after the true manna, | |
| He in short time became so great a teacher, | 40 |
| That he began to go about the vineyard, | |
| Which fadeth soon, if faithless be the dresser; | |
| And of the See, (that once was more benignant | |
| Unto the righteous poor, not through itself, | |
| But him who sits there and degenerates,) | 45 |
| Not to dispense or two or three for six, | |
| Not any fortune of first vacancy, | |
| Non decimas quæ sunt pauperum Dei, | |
| He asked for, but against the errant world | |
| Permission to do battle for the seed, | 50 |
| Of which these four-and-twenty plants surround thee. | |
| Then with the doctrine and the will together, | |
| With office apostolical he moved, | |
| Like torrent which some lofty vein out-presses; | |
| And in among the shoots heretical | 55 |
| His impetus with greater fury smote, | |
| Wherever the resistance was the greatest. | |
| Of him were made thereafter divers runnels, | |
| Whereby the garden catholic is watered, | |
| So that more living its plantations stand. | 60 |
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