Canto I of Paradise

Prolog of the Paradise.
Love is giving, and not receiving.

La gloria di colui che tutto move
per l'universo penetra, e risplende
in una parte più e meno altrove.

  Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prende
fu' io, e vidi cose che ridire
né sa né può chi di là sù discende;

  perché appressando sé al suo disire,
nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,
che dietro la memoria non può ire.

  Veramente quant'io del regno santo
ne la mia mente potei far tesoro,
sarà ora materia del mio canto.

I, I went up there, and I saw things which you are unaware of, and that cannot be expressed. 
While approaching the object of his desire, our intelligence is impotent
 to remember the course already done. 

Oh dear Baudelaire! you who guided my steps up to now, fill me with your literary genius 
to better describe this journey, give me the necessary inspiration to make known, the itinerary. 
You Jeanne, virtuous Virgin, if you would give yourself to me that I can show the kingdom 
whose image rest in my brain, I would fill you with my favours. 
Alas, like all the mortals, I am carried away by my passions and I entertain only 
cheap desires which are unworthy of my art, but what can I do to it? 

Then I saw Jeanne looking in direction of the Celestial Globe. Never ravenous could have
 fixed Her, with its glance as much as I did. So her gestures insufflated in me the will, to do like Her, 
and I looked at the sun as She did but could not support it as much as Her.

 Jeanne was always fixing the Celestial Globe, and me, I had my eyes staring at Her, to contemplate Her 
and covet Her, and I was such as a Satyr to taste the Aura which was escaping from Her;
I had the desire to melt myself in Her. 
She, who saw in me as much as I in myself, says to me, to alleviate the desires in me: 


"Your wills are bad, so that you cannot see what you should see 
if you at least got rid, of your ignorance. 
You are no more on earth as you believe to be, and the things here have not the same meaning." 


I was temporarily delivered from my doubts by Her words of great wisdom, but, my spirit was locked up 
in the laces of a second doubt; I looked at Her filled with love, and I say to Her: 
 
"But, I am astonished not to be able to penetrate, unballasted from Her steel armour,
 the soft Body of my Beauty, transparent like that of the angels; 
would it be that it is too pure or that, I am not sufficiently pure myself?" 


She let escaped a breath of pity and looked at me, like my mother use to do
 in front of her son full of delirious thoughts: 

"The things have an order between them. All beings have the form 
of the divine intelligence and the instinct of going towards their destiny. As much as the beings
 who do not have the intelligence, then the beings who, like you, share  intelligence and Love.
Providence regulates the things like so. But if, by primitive tendencies, you let yourself seduce 
by false desires, and that your thoughts, are those you maintained on earth,
 you will never be able to recognize the joys of the Empyree.
 Because you believe to be free, your instinct makes you deviates from the Good; 
you are attracted by the Evil and the seduction of false pleasures; you believe you love Me
while wanting to take Me, whereas it would be necessary for you to give yourself entirely to Me. 
Love is giving and not receiving." 


And I answered to Her:  
"And you, if you would give yourself to me, would this not be, that way, 
the most beautiful proof of your love for me?" 


Then She  turned Her eyes towards Heaven.