[1] So may illuminating grace find the disposition in thee requisite for the support of its light, until thou shalt arrive at the summit of the Mountain, the earthly Paradise enamelled with perpetual flowers. [2] A part of the Lunigiana. [3] The old Corrado Malaspina was the husband of Constance, the sister of King Manfred. He died about the middle of the thirteenth century. The second Corrado was his grandson. [4] This magnificent eulogy of the land and the family of Malaspina is Dante’s return for the hospitality which, in 1306, he received from the Marquis Moroello and other members of the house. [5] Seven years shall not pass, the sun being at this time in the sign of the Ram. CANTO IX. Slumber and Dream of Dante.—The Eagle.—Lucia.—The Gate of Purgatory.—The Angelic Gatekeeper.—Seven P’s inscribed on Dante’s Forehead.—Entrance to the First Ledge. The concubine of old Tithonus was now gleaming white on the balcony of the orient, forth from the arms of her sweet friend; her forehead was lucent with gems set in the shape of the cold animal that strikes people with its tail.[1] And in the place where we were the night had taken two of the steps with which she ascends, and the third was already bending down its wings, when I, who had somewhat of Adam with me, overcome by sleep, reclined upon the grass, there where all five of us were seated. [1] By the concubine of old Tithonus, Dante seems to have intended the lunar Aurora, in distinction from the proper wife of Tithonus, Aurora, who precedes the rising Sun, and the meaning of these verses is that “ the Aurora before moonrise was lighting up the eastern sky, the brilliant stars of the sign Scorpio were on the horizon, and, finally, it was shortly after 8.30 P.M.” (Moore.) “The steps with which the night ascends” are the six hours of the first half of the night, from 6 P.M. to midnight. At the hour near the morning when the little swallow begins her sad lays,[1] perchance in memory of her former woes, and when our mind, more a wanderer from the flesh and less captive to the thought, is in its visions almost divine,[2] in dream it seemed to me that I saw poised in the sky an eagle with feathers of gold, with wings widespread, and intent to stoop. And it seemed to me that I was there[3] where his own people were abandoned by Ganymede, when he was rapt to the supreme consistory. In myself I thought, “Perhaps this bird strikes only here through wont, and perhaps from other place disdains to carry anyone upward in his feet.” Then it seemed to me that, having wheeled a little, it descended terrible as a thunderbolt, and snatched me upwards far as the fire.[4] There it seemed that it and I burned, and the imagined fire so scorched that of necessity the sleep was broken. [1] The allusion is to the tragic story of Progne and Philomela, turned the one into a swallow, the other into a nightingale. Dante found the tale in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book vi.