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.

There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of depsair

No sadness is greater than in misery to rehearse memories of joy.

You shall find out how salt is the taste of another man's bread, and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs.

Here my powers rest from their high fantasy, but already I could feel my being turned- instinct and intellect balanced equally. as in a wheel whose motion nothing jars- by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.

Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me.

And when he had put his hand on mine with a cheerful look, wherefrom I took courage, he brought me within to the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding through the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible utterances, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and faint, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls always in that air forever dark, like the sand when the whirlwind breathes.