Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v2.djvu/25



LREADY had the sun the horizon reached

Whose circle of meridian covers o'er

Jerusalem with its most lofty point,

And night that opposite to him revolves

Was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales

That fall from out her hand when she exceedeth;

So that the white and the vermilion cheeks

Of beautiful Aurora, where I was,

By too great age were changing into orange.

We still were on the border of the sea,

Like people who are thinking of their road,

Who go in heart, and with the body stay;

And lo! as when, upon the approach of morning,

Through the gross vapors Mars grows fiery red

Down in the West upon the ocean floor,

Appeared to me—may I again behold it!—

A light along the sea so swiftly coming,

Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled;