Whose beams divine with vivid force aspire,
And leap resounding from a fount of fire.
And in the beginning of his forty-second year, he appeared to himself to pronounce these verses, with a loud voice:
Lo! on my soul a sacred fire descends,
Whose vivid pow’r the intellect extends;
From whence far-beaming through dull bodies night,
It soars to æther deck’d with starry light;
And with soft murmurs through the azure round,
The lucid regions of the gods resound.
Besides, he clearly perceived that he belonged to the Mercurial series; and was persuaded from a dream that he possessed the soul of[64] Nicomachus the Pythagorean.