Paradiso: Canto 32 Dante Alighieri (Ft. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Paradiso: Canto XXXII

Absorbed in his delight, that contemplator
   Assumed the willing office of a teacher,
   And gave beginning to these holy words:

"The wound that Mary closed up and anointed,
   She at her feet who is so beautiful,
   She is the one who opened it and pierced it.

Within that order which the third seats make
   Is seated Rachel, lower than the other,
   With Beatrice, in manner as thou seest.

Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and her who was
   Ancestress of the Singer, who for dole
   Of the misdeed said, 'Miserere mei,'

Canst thou behold from seat to seat descending
   Down in gradation, as with each one's name
   I through the Rose go down from leaf to leaf.

And downward from the seventh row, even as
   Above the same, succeed the Hebrew women,
   Dividing all the tresses of the flower;