St. John examines Dante upon Charity.
While I was doubting for my vision quenched, Out of the flame refulgent that had quenched it Issued a breathing, that attentive made me, Saying: “While thou recoverest the sense Of seeing which in me thou hast consumed, ’Tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it. Begin then, and declare to what thy soul Is aimed, and count it for a certainty, Sight is in thee bewildered and not dead; Because the Lady, who through this divine Region conducteth thee, has in her look The power the hand of Ananias had.” I said: “As pleaseth her, or soon or late Let the cure come to eyes that portals were When she with fire I ever burn with entered. The Good, that gives contentment to this Court, The Alpha and Omega is of all The writing that love reads me low or loud.” The selfsame voice, that taken had from me The terror of the sudden dazzlement, To speak still farther put it in my thought; And said: “In verity with finer sieve Behoveth thee to sift; thee it behoveth To say who aimed thy bow at such a target.” And I: “By philosophic arguments, And by authority that hence descends, Such love must needs imprint itself in me; For Good, so far as good, when comprehended Doth straight enkindle love, and so much greater As more of goodness in itself it holds; Then to that Essence (whose is such advantage That every good which out of it is found Is nothing but a ray of its own light) More than elsewhither must the mind be moved Of everyone, in loving, who discerns The truth in which this evidence is founded. Such truth he to my intellect reveals Who demonstrates to me the primal love Of all the sempiternal substances. The voice reveals it of the truthful Author, Who says to Moses, speaking of Himself, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee.’ Thou too revealest it to me, beginning The loud Evangel, that proclaims the secret Of heaven to earth above all other edict.” And I