Paradiso Canto I:1-12

Energy permeates the universe and shines through in some spots more than others.

I was in a bright place and as with all who find themselves in glorious environs, am destined to remember it only imperfectly. Who, descending from a mountain, can explain and pass on the feeling that suffused them at its summit? Who, exiting a forgotten cathedral, can describe what passed between them and the golden dust motes within?

You cannot do it – or if the words exist, they’re so pure that you instinctively hold them in your heart as your own secret jewels.

Still, as the composer must pen notes to an adagio only they can hear, I must try to say where I was and do that bright place justice.

 

The glory of the One who moves all things
permeates the universe and glows
in one part more and in another less.

I was within the heaven that receives
more of His light; and I saw things that he
who from that height descends, forgets or can
not speak; for nearing its desired end,
our intellect sinks into an abyss
so deep that memory fails to follow it.

Nevertheless, as much as I, within
my mind, could treasure of the holy kingdom
shall now become the matter of my song.

Translated by Allen Mandelbaum

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak.”

T.S. Eliot, The Waste-Land, 1922.

“Hyacinths at Ventnor Botanic Garden 2”  Editor5807, 2011.

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, 1867.