Purgatory 9
Now she who shares the bed of old Tithonus, abandoning the arms of her sweet lover, grew white along the eastern balcony; the heavens facing her were glittering with gems set in the semblance of the chill animal that assails men with its tail; while night within the valley where we were had moved across two of the steps it climbs, and now the third step made night’s wings incline; when I, who bore something of Adam with me, feeling the need for sleep, lay down upon the grass where now all five of us were seated. At that hour close to morning when the swallow begins her melancholy songs, perhaps in memory of her ancient sufferings, when, free to wander farther from the flesh and less held fast by cares, our intellect’s envisionings become almost divine— in dream I seemed to see an eagle poised, with golden pinions, in the sky: its wings were open; it was ready to swoop down. And I seemed to be there where Ganymede desert...