are not too few – that you should free this man
from all the clouds of his mortality,
so highest happiness be shown to him.
Our Queen, to you, who may do what you will,
I also pray you keep him (he has seen
so much!) healthy in all his heart intends.
Watch, and defeat the impulses of man.
See! Beatrice with so many saints
closes her hands in prayers along with mine.’
The eyes – which God both loves and venerates –
attentive to these orisons, made clear
how welcome to her were these holy prayers
and then turned straight to the eternal light
in which (we’re bound to think) no creature’s eye
inwardly travels with such clarity.
And drawing nearer, as I had to now,
the end of all desires, in my own self
I ended all the ardour of desire.
Now Bernard, smiling, made a sign to me
that I look up. Already, though, I was,
by my own will, as he desired I be.
My sight, becoming pure and wholly free,
entered still more, then more, along the ray
of that one light which, of itself, is true.
Seeing, henceforward, was far more than speech –
yielding before the sight I saw – can show.
Mind’s memory yields, outraged at that beyond.
Like those who see so clearly while they dream
that marks of feeling, when their dreaming ends,
remain, though nothing more returns to mind,
so I am now. For nearly all I saw
has gone, even if, still, within my heart,
there drops the sweetness that was born from that.
So, too, in sunlight, snow will lose its seal.
So, too, the oracles the Sibyl wrote
on weightless leaves are lost upon the wind.
You raise yourself so far, O highest light,
above our dying thoughts! Now lend once more
some little part of what it seemed you were,
and make my tongue sufficient in its powers
that it may leave at least one telling spark
of all your glory to a future race.
Returning somewhat to my memory,
re-echoing a little in my verse,
your triumph over all will be more known.
As I believe, the sharp light I sustained
in that live ray was such that, if I’d turned
away, eyes blurring, I’d have lost my track.
And therefore (I remember this) I grew
the braver as I bore that light, and joined
the look I had to that unending might.
Grace, in all plenitude, you dared me set
my seeing eyes on that eternal light
so that all seeing there achieved its end.
Within in its depths, this light, I saw, contained,
bound up and gathered in a single book,
the leaves that scatter through the universe –
beings and accidents and modes of life,
as though blown all together in a way
that what I say is just a simple light.
This knotting-up of universal form
I saw, I’m sure of that. For now I feel,
in saying this, a gift of greater joy.
One single point in trauma is far more,
for me, than those millennia since sail
made Neptune marvel under Argos-shade.
looked on, intent and still, in wondering awe
and, lit by wonder, always flared anew.
We all become, as that light strikes us, such
we cannot (this would be impossible)
consent to turn and seek some other face.
For good – the only object of our will –
is gathered up entire in that one light.
Outside it, all is flawed that’s perfect there.
And now my spark of words will come more short –
even of what I still can call to mind –
than baby tongues still bathing in mum’s milk.
But not because that living light on which,
in wonder, I now fixed my eyes showed more
than always as before and one sole sight.
Rather, as sight in me, yet looking on,
grew finer still, one single showing-forth
(me, changing mutely) laboured me more near.
Within the being – lucid, bright and deep –
of that high brilliance, there appeared to me
three circling spheres, three-coloured, one in span.
And one, it seemed, was mirrored by the next
twin rainbows, arc to arc. The third seemed fire,
and breathed to first and second equally.
How short mere speaking falls, how faint against
my own idea. And this idea, compared
to what I saw … well, ‘little’ hardly squares.
Eternal light, you sojourn in yourself alone.
Alone, you know yourself. Known to yourself,
you, knowing, love and smile on your own being.
An inter-circulation, thus conceived,
appears in you like mirrored brilliancy.
But when a while my eyes had looked this round,
deep in itself, it seemed – as painted now,
in those same hues – to show our human form.
At which, my sight was set entirely there.
As some geometer may fix his mind
to find a circle-area, yet lack,
in thought, the principle his thoughts require,
likewise with me at this sight seen so new.
I willed myself to see what fit there was,
image to circle, and how this all in-where’d.
But mine were wings that could not rise to that,
save that, with this, my mind, was stricken through
by sudden lightning bringing what it wished.
All powers of high imagining here failed.
But now my will and my desire were turned,
as wheels that move in equilibrium,
by love that moves the sun and other stars.
BOCCACCIO · Mrs Rosie and the Priest
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS · As kingfishers catch fire
The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue
THOMAS DE QUINCEY · On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE · Aphorisms on Love and Hate
JOHN RUSKIN · Traffic
PU SONGLING · Wailing Ghosts
JONATHAN SWIFT · A Modest Proposal
Three Tang Dynasty Poets
WALT WHITMAN · On the Beach at Night Alone
KENKŌ · A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees
BALTASAR GRACIÁN · How to Use Your Enemies
JOHN KEATS · The Eve of St Agnes
THOMAS HARDY · Woman much missed
GUY DE MAUPASSANT · Femme Fatale
MARCO POLO · Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls
SUETONIUS · Caligula
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON · Olalla
KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS · The Communist Manifesto
PETRONIUS · Trimalchio’s Feast
JOHANN PETER HEBEL · How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher’s Dog
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN · The Tinder Box
RUDYARD KIPLING · The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows
DANTE · Circles of Hell
HENRY MAYHEW · Of Street Piemen
HAFEZ · The nightingales are drunk
GEOFFREY CHAUCER · The Wife of Bath
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE · How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing
THOMAS NASHE · The Terrors of the Night
&nbs
p; EDGAR ALLAN POE · The Tell-Tale Heart
MARY KINGSLEY · A Hippo Banquet
JANE AUSTEN · The Beautifull Cassandra
ANTON CHEKHOV · Gooseberries
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE · Well, they are gone, and here must I remain
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE · Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings
CHARLES DICKENS · The Great Winglebury Duel
HERMAN MELVILLE · The Maldive Shark
ELIZABETH GASKELL · The Old Nurse’s Story
NIKOLAY LESKOV · The Steel Flea
HONORÉ DE BALZAC · The Atheist’s Mass
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN · The Yellow Wall-Paper
C. P. CAVAFY · Remember, Body …
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY · The Meek One
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT · A Simple Heart
NIKOLAI GOGOL · The Nose
SAMUEL PEPYS · The Great Fire of London
EDITH WHARTON · The Reckoning
HENRY JAMES · The Figure in the Carpet
WILFRED OWEN · Anthem For Doomed Youth
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART · My Dearest Father
PLATO · Socrates’ Defence
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI · Goblin Market
Sindbad the Sailor
SOPHOCLES · Antigone
RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA · The Life of a Stupid Man
LEO TOLSTOY · How Much Land Does A Man Need?
GIORGIO VASARI · Leonardo da Vinci
OSCAR WILDE · Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
SHEN FU · The Old Man of the Moon
AESOP · The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon
MATSUO BASHō · Lips too Chilled
EMILY BRONTË · The Night is Darkening Round Me
JOSEPH CONRAD · To-morrow
RICHARD HAKLUYT · The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe
KATE CHOPIN · A Pair of Silk Stockings
CHARLES DARWIN · It was snowing butterflies
BROTHERS GRIMM · The Robber Bridegroom
CATULLUS · I Hate and I Love
HOMER · Circe and the Cyclops
D. H. LAWRENCE · Il Duro
KATHERINE MANSFIELD · Miss Brill
OVID · The Fall of Icarus
SAPPHO · Come Close
IVAN TURGENEV · Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands
VIRGIL · O Cruel Alexis
H. G. WELLS · A Slip under the Microscope
HERODOTUS · The Madness of Cambyses
Speaking of Siva
The Dhammapada
JANE AUSTEN · Lady Susan
JEAN-JACQUES ROSSEAU · The Body Politic
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE · The World is Full of Foolish Men
H. G. WELLS · The Sea Raiders
LIVY · Hannibal
CHARLES DICKENS · To Be Read at Dusk
LEO TOLSTOY · The Death of Ivan Ilyich
MARK TWAIN · The Stolen White Elephant
WILLIAM BLAKE · Tyger, Tyger
SHERIDAN LE FANU · Green Tea
The Yellow Book
OLAUDAH EQUIANO · Kidnapped
EDGAR ALLAN POE · A Modern Detective
The Suffragettes
MARGERY KEMPE · How To Be a Medieval Woman
JOSEPH CONRAD · Typhoon
GIACOMO CASANOVA · The Nun of Murano
W. B. YEATS · A terrible beauty is born
THOMAS HARDY · The Withered Arm
EDWARD LEAR · Nonsense
ARISTOPHANES · The Frogs
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE · Why I Am so Clever
RAINER MARIA RILKE · Letters to a Young Poet
LEONID ANDREYEV · Seven Hanged
APHRA BEHN · Oroonoko
LEWIS CARROLL · O frabjous day!
JOHN GAY · Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London
E. T. A. HOFFMANN · The Sandman
DANTE · Love that moves the sun and other stars
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN · The Queen of Spades
ANTON CHEKHOV · A Nervous Breakdown
KAKUZO OKAKURA · The Book of Tea
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE · Is this a dagger which I see before me?
EMILY DICKINSON · My life had stood a loaded gun
LONGUS · Daphnis and Chloe
MARY SHELLEY · Matilda
GEORGE ELIOT · The Lifted Veil
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY · White Nights
OSCAR WILDE · Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast
VIRGINIA WOOLF · Flush
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE · Lot No. 249
The Rule of Benedict
WASHINGTON IRVING · Rip Van Winkle
Anecdotes of the Cynics
VICTOR HUGO · Waterloo
CHARLOTTE BRONTË · Stancliffe’s Hotel
littleblackclassics.com
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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Penguin Classics is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
This selection first published in Penguin Classics 2016
Translation copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2007
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-241-25043-3