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It often happens. A noble captain
lets his small dear son wander in disguise among us. Now the boy peeks out from this shadow, and now that. When he's there the dark does not just vanish, no, he moves within a shifting radiance. And when we're grown, a ray of light sent straight into the heart draws us past this dark veil of flesh, freed of this earth's burden which closes in on and deadens us. All's clear; the foot turns to the right; no more exhaustion, time lost in unreal sinister mazes. One whose faith is fixed is born far away in sunlight, soft air. Here are unsafe rocks, there elysium. |
An image of the Italian text from Visconti's 1840 edition |
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Notes: V CLIII:313. See also B S1:166:168. In MC Ve2 and Valgrisi 167. Reference is to 1 Cor 13:9-12. Vittoria moves from an analogy of God with a supreme leader, to a sense of the son and child as himself "trailing clouds of glory," to an analogy of the son with God's illumination of the adult who is then eternally faithful. The image of the child is in 1 Cor 13:11; of the dark glass in 1 Cor 13:12. Key |
