Often A Retrospect Delights The Mind.

I Wept Not — So To Stone I Grew Within.

Through Me The Way Into The Suffering City, Through Me The Way To The Eternal Pain, Through Me The Way That Runs Among The Lost. Justice Urged On My High Artificer; My Maker Was Divine Authority, The Highest Wisdom, And The Primal Love. Before Me Nothing But Eternal Things Were Made, And I Endure Eternally. Abandon Every Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

The Heaven That Rolls Around Cries Aloud To You While It Displays Its Eternal Beauties, And Yet Your Eyes Are Fixed Upon The Earth Alone.

The Heavens Call To You, And Circle About You, Displaying To You Their Eternal Splendors, And Your Eye Gazes Only To Earth.

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..."