Cecillian Scrawls: Land of Expectation

"Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:

But now was turning my desire and will,

Even as a wheel that equally is moved,

The Love which moves the sun and other stars."

Dante, Divine Comedy (Paradiso: Canto XXXIII 142-145), [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation]

The power of dreams, and my own visions of a 'Paradiso':

I write of a land of expectation,

Of hope, of harmony, of purity,

A horizon beneath a scarlet sunset

Of destiny, to dance upon the greenery

Interspersed with streams, that flow wild and free

As a blissful dream, and their shallow banks

From which to dip my feet, into the tide

That guides the shy pebbles to pastures new.

Nightly, kind moon, would gaze upon the fields,

The dales, the deeps where the damsels weep;

Their golden hair the colour of the corn

That sits upon the soil and softly sleeps.

Eternity, in a sunrise, must come,

Dreams rest upon shoulders on barren sands

Flushed with despair, smited by a vengeful

God, whose cruel curses crash as angry waves

Upon undeserving cliffs, yet break off

Then time again come forth, see the gallant

Rock succumb to dust, as flames fade to ash.

Pray now for the hills, over distant seas,

For the blossoming of the root from the seed,

For the vine, the leaf, for a tranquil heath

That gives blessings unto a lonely peak

Since kissed by a breeze soft, gentle and sweet.

Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Cecillian Scrawls