The Terrestrial Paradise

Purgatorio XXVIII. 1-33.

Longing already to search in and round / The heavenly forest, dense and living-green, / Which tempered to the eyes the newborn day, / Withouten more delay I left the bank, / Crossing the level country slowly, slowly, / Over the soil, that everywhere breathed fragrance. / A gently-breathing air, that no mutation / Had in itself, smote me upon the forehead, / No heavier blow, than of a pleasant breeze, / Whereat the tremulous branches readily / Did all of them bow downward towards that side / Where its first shadow casts the Holy Mountain; / Yet not from their upright direction bent / So that the little birds upon their tops / Should cease the practice of their tuneful art; / But with full-throated joy, the hours of prime / Singing received they in the midst of foliage / That made monotonous burden to their rhymes, / Even as from branch to branch it gathering swells, / Through the pine forests on the shore of Chiassi, / When Aeolus unlooses the Sirocco. / Already my slow steps had led me on / Into the ancient wood so far, that I / Could see no more the place where I had entered. / And lo! my further course cut off a river, / Which, tow'rds the left hand, with its little waves, / Bent down the grass, that on its margin sprang. / All waters that on earth most limpid are, / Would seem to have within themselves some mixture, / Compared with that, which nothing doth conceal, / Although it moves on with a brown, brown current, / Under the shade perpetual, that never / Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon.