Today my heart is full.
It feels like spring. I walked to the school today and actually had to take off my coat. My daffodils are growing. The tallest one is now over three inches high. And the neighbor's yard that I enjoy walking past has new mulch, and her bulbs are coming up too.
Also today I reached the uppermost Terrace on the way out of Purgatory. How perfect it empties into eternal spring:
. . . . They, whose verse of yore
The golden age recorded and its bliss,
On the Parnassian mountain, of this place
Perhaps had dream’d. Here was man guiltless; here
Perpetual spring, and every fruit; and this
The far-famed nectar. (28. 145-150)
The golden age recorded and its bliss,
On the Parnassian mountain, of this place
Perhaps had dream’d. Here was man guiltless; here
Perpetual spring, and every fruit; and this
The far-famed nectar. (28. 145-150)
Eden is fed by the living waters that issue straight from God's will, and it is cooled by a light breeze caused when the earth's atmospheric envelope sweeps through the cosmos. The air fills with the songs of birds and the sweet scents of many red and yellow "tender blossoms."
In moving toward paradise-- (ultimately, perhaps our only position) -- we already have salvation but need our heart's acceptance of the fullness of God's peace and joy. And we need a hand or two to hold as we walk. Then in our striding the line between Purgatory and Eden, some few days our footsteps fall within the boundary of paradise, and we do well to be grateful for the sense found in the "lively greenness and new-springing day" of our own souls.
Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade
With lively greenness the new-springing day
Attemper’d, eager now to roam, and search
Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank;
Along the champain leisurely my way
Pursuing, o’er the ground, that on all sides
Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air,
That intermitted never, never veer’d,
Smote on my temples, gently, as a wind
Of softest influence: at which the sprays,
Obedient all, lean’d trembling to that part
Where first the holy mountain casts his shade;
Yet were not so disorder’d, but that still
Upon their top the feather’d quiristers
Applied their wonted art, and with full joy
Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill
Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays
Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch,
Along the piny forests on the shore
Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
The dripping south. Already had my steps,
Though slow, so far into that ancient wood
Transported me . . . . (28.1-4)
Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill
Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays
Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch,
Along the piny forests on the shore
Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
The dripping south. Already had my steps,
Though slow, so far into that ancient wood
Transported me . . . . (28.1-4)
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