Joseph > Recent Status Updates

It was the hour when the diurnal heat/ No more can warm the coldness of the moon,/ Vanquished by earth, or peradventure Saturn,/ When geomancers their Fortuna Major/ See in the orient before the dawn/ Rise by a path that long remains not dim,/ There came to me in dreams a stammering woman,/ Squint in her eyes, and in her feet distorted,/ With hands dissevered, and of sallow hue.

When we had crossed the threshold of the door/ Which the perverted love of souls disuses,/ Because it makes the crooked way seem strait,/ Re-echoing I heard it closed again;/ And if I had turned back mine eyes upon it,/ What for my failing had been fit excuse?

The concubine of old Tithonus now/ Gleamed white upon the eastern balcony,/ Forth from the arms of her sweet paramour;

'Twas now the hour that turneth back desire/ In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart,/ The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell,/ And the new pilgrim penetrates with love,/ If he doth hear from far away a bell/ That seemeth to deplore the dying day,/ When I began to make of no avail/ My hearing, and to watch one of the souls/ Uprisen, that begged attention with its hand.

Ah! servile Italy, grief's hostelry!/ A ship without a pilot in great tempest!/ No Lady thou of Provinces, but brothel!/ That noble soul was so impatient, only/ At the sweet sound of his own native land,/ To make its citizen glad welcome there;/ And now within thee are not without war/ Thy living ones, and one doth gnaw the other/ Of those whom one wall and one fosse shut in!

Whenever by delight or else by pain,/ That seizes any faculty of ours,/ Wholly to that the soul collects itself,/ It seemeth that no ther power it heeds;/ And this against that error is which thinks/ One soul above another kindles in us.

To run o'er better waters hoists its sail/ The little vessel of my genius now,/ That leaves behind itself a sea so cruel;/ And of that second kingdom I will sing/ Wherein the human spirit doth purge itself,/ And to ascend to heaven becometh worthy.

The many people and the divers wounds/ These eyes of mine had so inebriated,/ That they were wishful to stand still and weep;

At the conclusion of his words, the thief/ Lifted his hands aloft with both the figs,/ Crying: "Take that, God, for at thee I aim them."

Behold the monster with the pointed tail,/ Who cleaves the hills, and breaketh walls and weapons,/ behold him who infecteth all the world.

It is really refreshing to be reading this in well executed verse.

starting the divine Comedy on Holy Saturday. I call this a win.