One meant to plunder, one to politic;
one labored, tangled in delights of flesh,
and one was fully bent on indolence;

while I, delivered from our servitude
to all these things, was in the height of heaven
with Beatrice, so gloriously welcomed.

After each of those spirits^a had returned
to that place in the ring where it had been,
it halted, like a candle in its stand.

And from within the splendor that had spoken
to me before, I heard him,^b as he smiled—
become more radiant, more pure—begin:

"Even as I grow bright within Its rays,
so, as I gaze at the Eternal Light,
I can perceive your thoughts and see their cause.

You are in doubt; you want an explanation
in language that is open and expanded,
so clear that it contents your understanding

of two points: where I said, 'They fatten well,'
and where I said, 'No other ever rose'^c—
and here one has to make a clear distinction.

The Providence that rules the world with wisdom
so fathomless that creatures' intellects
are vanquished and can never probe its depth,

so that the Bride of Him who, with loud cries,^d
had wed her with His blessed blood, might meet
her Love with more fidelity and more

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