More of the mountain had now been circled by us, and of the sun’s course far more spent, than my mind, not disengaged, was aware, when he, who always in advance attent was going on, began, “Lift up thy head; there is no more time for going thus abstracted. See there an Angel, who is hastening to come toward us: see how from the service of the day the sixth hand-maiden returns.[1] With reverence adorn thine acts and thy face so that he may delight to direct us upward. Think that this day never dawns again.” [1] The sixth hour of the day is coming to its end, near noon. I was well used to his admonition ever to lose no time, so that on that theme he could not speak to me obscurely. To us came the beautiful creature, clothed in white, and in his face such as seems the tremulous morning star. Its arms it opened, and then it opened its wings; it said, “Come: here at hand are the steps, and easily henceforth one ascends. To this invitation very few come. O human race, born to fly upward, why before a little wind dost thou so fall?” He led us to where the rock was cut; here he struck his wings across my forehead,[1] then promised me secure progress. [1] Removing the first P that the Angel of the Gate had incised on Dante’s brow. As on the right hand, in going up the mountain,[1] where sits the church that dominates her the well-guided[2] city above Rubaconte,[3] the bold flight of the ascent is broken by the stairs, which were made in an age when the record and the stave were secure,[4] in like manner, the bank which falls here very steeply from the next round is slackened; but on this side and that the high rock grazes.[5] As we turned our persons thither, voices sang “Beati pauperes spiritu”[6] in such wise that speech could not tell it. Ah, how different are these passes from those of Hell! for here through songs one enters, and there below through fierce lamentings. [1] The hill of San Miniato, above Florence. [2] Ironical. [3] The upper bridge at Florence across the Arno, named after Messer Rubaconte di Mandella, podesta of Florence, who laid the first stone of it in 1237; now called the Ponte alle Grazie, after a little chapel built upon it in 1471, and dedicated to Our Lady of Grace. [4] In the good old time when men were honest. In 1299 one Messer Niccola Acciaioli, in order to conceal a fraudulent transaction, had a leaf torn out from the public notorial record; and about the same time an officer in charge of the revenue from salt, for the sake of private gain, measured the salt he received with an honest measure, but that which he sold with a measure diminished by the removal of a stave. [5] The stairway is so narrow. [6] “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” As Dante passes from each round of Purgatory, an angel removes the P which denotes the special sin there purged away. And the removal is accompanied with the words of one of the Beatitudes.