By whom provisions gained increase: therefore in their merits
He resembled the Fathers of old, and also in their acts.

The passionate burning of divine love had the effect
Of moving his inner being so much, that often praying
Or meditating he was so totally absorbed within,
That his outer self was unaware of corporal events.
He passed through Borgo,^a riding on an ass
Because of his feebleness; yet there he was, supernal
Things contemplating, his soul borne off to the celestial.
Converging on him out of devotion, people in droves
Touched in veneration and tugged him; though what they were doing
He neither mentally noticed nor physically felt.
After a long time, like one returning from some other place,
He would commence asking if they were approaching Borgo.
For raised aloft, he was unaware of events below him;
Very many times to him this was proven to have happened.

And because to men of prayer worldly clatter is a hindrance,
Just as holy quiet of much benefit proves itself,
To abandoned churches in the night and to lonesome places
He betook himself to pray. There with demons horrid battles
He endured, as they would hinder him, from the first moment
He gave himself to prayer, with various intimidation.
Assuredly, the more fiercely he was assailed by them,
The stronger and more fervid was his constancy in prayer.
To their confusion and their routing, with the Lord on his side,
At peace with himself he remained, inwardly and outwardly.
The woods he filled with sighs, the area with tears bedewing
And cleaving to the relished embraces of his Beloved,
He would wholly dilate into spiritual ecstasies.
Praying at night, he could be seen away up in the air
Above the ground to stand, with his hands extended like a cross,
All about him a gleaming cloud, so that bearing witness
To his exalted and radiant soul should be the prodigious
Display itself of elevated body and of light.

Assisi's presiding bishop, staunch friend of the holy man,
Often used to come on a visit to him; and one time,
In a less than thoughtful way entering the praying man's cell,
When he put his head in to have a look at him praying,
Immediately was he driven back out by the Lord's power
And vehemently carried away backwards a good distance,

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