Jacob Moore’s Reviews > Purgatory > Status Update

"Blessed are they whom grace grants so much light
that in their hearts the overhot desires,"
said he, "send up no smoke for taste's delight--
Whose thirst is always what the just requires." (24.151-154)

No patriotism is so fierce as that which demands that one's native land be just. "We love Florence so dearly," wrote Dante, "that for the love we bore her we are wrongfully suffering exile." (Endnote on p. 424)

My sins were horrible, but endless grace
has arms of generous goodness thrown so wide
they take in all who tutn to them...

No man so loses, by their curse's power,
eternal love, that love cannot return
so long as hope shows any gren in flower.

(III.121-123 and 133-135)

All around this little island at the base
where the waves pound against the mountain's shore,
reeds grow in the soft mud. No other plants
That break out into leaf or strand upright
with stiffened trunk can long survive the place,
but yield to all the battering of the waves. (I.100-105)