Canto VIII

affection. O how and how much I beheld it grow With the new joy that superadded was Unto its joys, as soon as I had spoken! Thus changed, it said to me: “The world possessed me Short time below; and, if it had been more, Much evil will be which would not have been. My gladness keepeth me concealed from thee, Which rayeth round about me, and doth hide me Like as a creature swathed in its own silk. Much didst thou love me, and thou hadst good reason; For had I been below, I should have shown thee Somewhat beyond the foliage of my love. That left-hand margin, which doth bathe itself In Rhone, when it is mingled with the Sorgue, Me for its lord awaited in due time, And that horn of Ausonia, which is towned With Bari, with Gaeta and Catona, Whence Tronto and Verde in the sea disgorge. Already flashed upon my brow the crown Of that dominion which the Danube waters After the German borders it abandons; And beautiful Trinacria, that is murky ’Twixt Pachino and Peloro, (on the gulf Which greatest scath from Eurus doth receive,) Not through Typhoeus, but through nascent sulphur, Would have awaited her own monarchs still, Through me from Charles descended and from Rudolph, If evil lordship, that exasperates ever The subject populations, had not moved Palermo to the outcry of ‘Death! death!’ And if my brother could but this foresee, The greedy poverty of Catalonia Straight would he flee, that it might not molest him; For verily ’tis needful to provide, Through him or other, so that on his bark Already freighted no more freight be placed. His nature, which from liberal covetous Descended, such a soldiery would need As should not care for hoarding in a chest.” “Because I do believe the lofty joy Thy speech infuses into me, my Lord, Where every good thing doth begin and end Thou seest as I see it, the more grateful Is it to me; and this too hold I dear, That gazing upon God thou dost discern it. Glad hast thou made me; so make clear to me, Since speaking thou hast stirred me up to doubt, How from sweet seed can bitter issue forth.” This I to him; and he to me: “If I Can show to thee a truth, to what thou askest Thy face thou’lt hold as thou dost hold thy back. The Good which all the realm