Canto 2 Dialogue

 

Virgil: Bend, bend your knees! Behold the angel of God!  Clasp your hands: henceforth you shall see such ministers.  Look how he scorns all human instruments, and will have no oar, nor other sail than his own wings between such distant shores; see how he holds them straight toward heaven, fanning the air with his eternal feathers that are not changed like mortal plumage.

 

Spirits in the boat: In exitu Israel de Aegypto.  If you know, show us the way up the mountain.

 

Virgil: Perhaps you think we are acquainted with this place; but we are pilgrims, like yourselves.  We came but now, a little while before you, by another road which was so rough and hard that henceforth the climb will seem but play to us.

 

Casella: Even as I loved you in my mortal body, so do I love you freed from it; therefore I stay.  But you, why do you go?

 

Dante: My Casella, to return here once again where I am I make this journey, but how has so much time been taken from you?

 

Casella: No wrong is done me if he who takes up whom and when he will has denied me this passage many times, for of a just will his own is made.  Truly, for three months now he has taken with all peace whoever would embark.  I, therefore, who was now turned to the seashore where the water of Tiber grows salt, was kindly gathered in by him.  To that river-mouth he has now set his wings, for there the souls are always gathering that sink not down to Acheron.

 

Dante: If a new law does not take from you memory or practice of the songs of love which used to quiet in me all my longings, may it please you therewith to comfort my soul somewhat, which coming hither with its body is so wearied.

 

Casella: Love that discourses in my mind.

 

Cato: What is this, you laggard spirits?  What negligence, what stay is this?  Haste to the mountain to strip off the slough that lets not God be manifest to you.