All 9 Uses
discern
in
Dante's Paradise -- translated by Norton
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- No more henceforth ought it to seem perplexing to thee, when it is said that a just vengeance was afterward avenged by a just court, "But I see now thy mind tied up, from thought to thought, within a knot the loosing of which is awaited with great desire, Thou sayest, 'I discern clearly that which I bear; but it is occult to we why God should will only this mode for our redemption.'†
Canto 1-11discern = notice or understand something
- Truly, inasmuch as on this mark there is much gazing, and little is discerned, I will tell why such mode was most worthy.†
Canto 1-11discerned = noticed something that is not obvious
- Because I believe that the deep joy which thy speech, my lord, infuses in me is seen by thee there where every good ends and begins[1] even as I see it in myself, it is the more grateful to me; and this also I hold dear, that thou discernest it, gazing upon God.†
Canto 1-11discernest = notice or understand somethingstandard suffix: Today, the suffix "-est" is dropped, so that where they said "Thou discernest" in older English, today we say "You discern."
- Here one gazes upon the art which adorns so great a work, and the good is discerned whereby the world above turns that below.†
Canto 1-11discerned = noticed something that is not obvious
- Wherefore our vision, which needs must be some ray of the Mind with which all things are full, cannot in its own nature be so potent that it may not discern its origin to be far beyond that which is apparent to it.†
Canto 12-22discern = notice or understand something
- Now he knows much of what the world cannot see of the divine grace, although his sight cannot discern its depth.
Canto 12-22 *discern = see
- But this is what seems to me hard to discern, why thou alone wert predestined to this office among thy consorts.†
Canto 12-22discern = notice or understand something
- Therefore, to the Essence (wherein is such supremacy that every good which is found outside of It is naught else than a beam of Its own radiance), more than to any other, the mind of every one who discerns the truth on which this argument is founded must needs be moved in love.†
Canto 23-33discerns = notices things that are not obvious
- Then it breathed, "Without its being uttered to me by thee, I better discern thy wish, than thou whatever thing is most certain to thee; because I see it in the truthful mirror which makes of Itself a likeness of other tbings, while nothing makes for It a likeness of Itself.†
Canto 23-33discern = notice or understand something
Definitions:
-
(1)
(discern) to notice or understand something -- often something that is not obvious
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)