1] So that the clearest objects produce no effect upon the eye.
“The Love which quieteth this Heaven always welcomes to itself with such a salutation, in order to make the candle ready for its flame.” No sooner had these brief words come within me than I comprehended that I was surmounting above my own power; and I rekindled me with a new vision, such that no light is so pure that my eyes had not sustained it. And I saw light in form of a river, bright with effulgence, between two banks painted with a marvellous spring. Out of this stream were issuing living sparks, and on every side were setting themselves in the flowers, like rubies which gold encompasses. Then, as if inebriated by the odors, they plunged again into the wonderful flood, and as one was entering another was issuing forth.
“The high desire which now inflames and urges thee to have knowledge concerning that which thou seest, Pleases me the more the more it swells, but thou must needs drink of this water before so great a thirst, in thee be slaked.” Thus the Sun of my eyes said to me; thereon she added, “The stream, and the topazes which enter and issue, and the smiling of the herbage, are foreshadowing prefaces of their truth;[1] not that these things are in themselves immature,[2] but there is defect on thy part who hast not yet vision so lofty.”
[1] The stream, the sparks, the flowers are not such in reality as they seem to be; they are but images foreshadowing the truth.
[2] The things show themselves as they are, but the eyes cannot yet see them correctly.
There is no babe who so hastily springs with face toward the milk, if he awake much later than his wont, as I did, to make better mirrors yet of my eyes, stooping to the wave which flows in order that one may be bettered in it. And even as the eaves of my eyelids drank of it, so it seemed to me from its length to become round. Then as folk who have been under masks, who seem other than before, if they divest themselves of the semblance not their own in which they disappeared, thus for me the flowers and the sparks were changed into greater festival, so that I saw both the Courts of Heaven manifest.
O splendor of God, by means of which I saw the high triumph of the true kingdom, give me power to tell how I saw it!
Light is thereabove which makes the Creator visible to that creature which has its peace only in seeing Him; and it is extended in a circular figure so far that its circumference would be too wide a girdle for the sun. Its whole appearance is made of a ray reflected from the summit of the First Moving Heaven,[1] which therefrom takes its life and potency. And as a hill mirrors itself in water at its base, as if to see itself adorned, rich as it is with verdure and with flowers, so ranged above the light, round and round about, on more than a thousand seats, I saw mirrored all who of us have returned on high. And if the lowest row gather within itself so great a light, how vast is the spread of this rose in its outermost leaves! My sight lost not itself in the breadth and in the height, but took in all the quantity and the quality of that joy. There near and far nor add nor take away; for where God immediately governs the natural law is of no relevancy.
[1] The Primum Mobile.
Into the yellow of the sempiternal rose, which spreads wide, rises in steps, and is redolent with odor of praise unto the Sun that makes perpetual spring, Beatrice, like one who is silent and wishes to speak, drew me, and said, “Behold, how vast is the convent of the white stoles![1] See our city, how wide its circuit! See our benches so full that few people are now awaited here. On that great seat, on which thou holdest thine eye because of the crown which already is set above it, ere thou suppest at this wedding feast will sit the soul (which below will be imperial) of the high Henry who, to set Italy straight, will come ere she is ready.[2] The blind cupidity which bewitches you has made you like the little child who dies of hunger, and drives away his nurse. And such a one will then be prefect in the divine forum that openly or covertly he will not go with him along one road;[3] but short while thereafter shall he be endured by God in the holy office; for he shall be thrust down for his deserts, there where Simon Magus is, and shall make him of Anagna go lower.”