The Secret Of Getting Things

The Infernal Storm, Eternal In Its Rage, Sweeps And Drives The Spirits With Its Blast; It Whirls Them, Lashing Them With Punishment. When They Are Swept Back Past Their Place Of Judgment Then Come The Shrieks, Laments, And Anguished Cries; There They Blaspheme God's Almighty Power.

O You Proud Christians, Wretched Souls And Small,/ Who By The Dim Lights Of Your Twisted Minds/ Believe You Prosper Even As You Fall,/ Can You Not See That We Are Worms, Each One/ Born To Become The Angelic Butterfly/ That Flies Defenseless To The Judgement Throne?

Thus You May Understand That Love Alone Is The True Seed Of Every Merit In You, And Of All Acts For Which You Must Atone.

In That Part Of The Book Of My Memory Before The Which Is Little That Can Be Read, There Is A Rubric, Saying, Incipit Vita Nova. Under Such Rubric I Find Written Many Things; And Among Them The Words Which I Purpose To Copy Into This Little Book; If Not All Of Them, At The Least Their Substance.

And Here Dante Describes An Evidently Spherical World... "the Lamp Of The World [the Sun] Rises To Mortals Through Different Passages; But Through That Which Joins Four Circles With Three Crosses [the Position Of The Rising Sun At The Vernal Equinox] It Issues With A Better Course And Conjoined With Better Stars, And Tempers And Stamps The Wax Of The World More After Its Own Fashion. Although Such An Outlet Had Made Morning There And Evening Here, And All The Hemisphere There Was Bright, And The Other Dark..."