At last Beatrice commanded him to look up. The wind uproots the oak tree with less resistance than Dante felt ere he could turn his downcast face to hers; but when he saw her, transcending her former self more than her former self transcended others, his agony of self-reproach and penitence was more than he could bear, and he fell senseless to the ground.[76]
When he awoke he was already plunged in the waters of Lethe, which with the companion stream of Eunoë would wash from his memory the shame and misery of past unfaithfulness, would enable him, no longer crushed by self-reproach, to ascend with the divine wisdom and purity of his own ideal into the higher realms.
And here the Purgatory ends, the Paradise begins.
[Footnote 55: _Purgatorio_, xix. 76, 77.]
[Footnote 57: _Purgatorio_, xxvi. 13-15, 81; xxvii. 49-51.]
[Footnote 58: _Purgatorio_, xii. 112, 113.]
[Footnote 59: Canzone xv. 'Amor, che nella mente.' See also _Convito_, trat. iii.]
[Footnote 62: _Purgatorio_, iii. 112-145, iv. 127-135.]
[Footnote 64: For the general scheme of Purgatory, see _Purgatorio_, xvii. 91-139.]
[Footnote 66: _Ibid._ xiii. 73, 74, 133-138.]
[Footnote 68: _Purgatorio_, xx. 124-151, xxi. 34-78.]
[Footnote 69: _Purgatorio_, v. 85-129, vi. 76-151, xiv. 16-72, xxiv. 82-87.]
[Footnote 71: _Purgatorio_, xix. 103-114.]
[Footnote 72: _Purgatorio_, viii. 71, 72.]
[Footnote 75: _Purgatorio_, xxii. 55-73.]
[Footnote 76: _Purgatorio_, xxx. 22--xxxi. 90.]
When Dante wrote the Paradise, he well knew that he was engaged in the supreme effort of his life, to which all else had led up. He well knew that he was engaged in no pastime, but with intensest concentration of matured power was delivering such a message from God to man as few indeed had ever been privileged or burdened to receive. He well knew that the words in which through long years of toil he had distilled the sweetness and the might of his vision were immortal, that to latest ages they would bear strength and purity of life, would teach the keen eye of the spirit to gaze into the uncreated light, and would flood the soul with a joy deeper than all unrest or sorrow, with a glory that no gloom could ever dispel. He knew moreover that this his last and greatest poem would speak to a few only in any generation, though speaking to those few with a voice of transforming power and grace.