XLI.
After this tribulation it came to pass, at that time when many people were going to see the blessed image which Jesus Christ left to us as the likeness of his most beautiful countenance, which my lady in glory now beholds, that certain pilgrims were passing through a street which is near the middle of that city where the most gentle lady was born, lived, and died; and they were going along, as it seemed to me, very pensive. Wherefore I, thinking on them, said within myself: “These seem to me pilgrims from some far-off region, and I do not believe that they have even heard speak of this lady, and they know nothing of her; nay, their thoughts are rather of other things than of these here; for perchance they are thinking of their distant friends, whom we do not know.” Then I said within me: “I know that, if these were from a neighboring land, they would show some sign of trouble as they pass through the midst of the grieving city.” Then again I said within me: “If I could hold them awhile, I would indeed make them weep before they should go out from this city; since I would say words which should make whoever might hear them weep.”
Wherefore, they having passed out of my sight, I resolved to make a sonnet in which I would set forth that which I had said to myself; and in order that it might appear more piteous, I resolved to say it as if I had spoken to them, and I devised this sonnet which begins, “O pilgrims.”
I said pilgrims in the wide sense of the word: for pilgrims may be understood in two senses, in one wide and in one narrow. In the wide, forasmuch as every one is a pilgrim who is away from his native land; in the narrow sense, by pilgrim is meant only he who goes to or returns from the House of St. James. And further it is to be known that the folk who journey on the service of the Most High are distinguished by three terms. Those who go beyond the sea, whence they bring back the palm, are called palmers; those who go to the House of Galicia are called pilgrims, because the burial-place of St. James was more distant from his country than that of any other of the Apostles; and those are called romers, who go to Rome, where these whom I call pilgrims were going.
This sonnet is not divided, because it sufficiently declares its own meaning.
O pilgrims, who in pensive mood move slow,
Thinking perchance of those who absent are,
Say, do ye come from folk away so far
As your appearance seems to us to show?
For ye weep not the while ye forward go
Along the middle of the mourning town;
Seeming as persons who have nothing known
Concerning the sad burden of her woe.
If, through your will to hear, awhile ye stay,
Truly my heart with sighs declares to me
That ye shall afterward depart in tears.
Alas! her Beatrice now lost hath she;
And all the words that one of her may say
Have virtue to make weep whoever hears.