Thursday, September 04, 2008
Beatrice in Rapture (poem)
Beatrice in Rapture
Always it was alone.
Always it was silence,
the inner radiance.
What was it I was waiting for?
At times it came,
spreading across my shadow
like sunlight over an autumn floor,
entering where
there was no real way.
Sometimes there was only a
suspension of nothingness,
emptiness palpable as dust.
But still I waited.
Patience was the key.
Lost in a wilderness of hope,
the uncounted stations
of desire.
Dorothy Walters
September 2, 2002
Beatrice was the beloved of Dante Alighieri, who first immortalized her in La Vita Nuova (The New Life) and later cast her as the guide of Dante through the later stages of La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy).
(The image is of the painting entitled "Beatrice in Rapture" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which now hangs in the Tate Gallery.)
