My glance had comprehended as a whole,
In no part hitherto remaining fixed,
And round I turned me with rekindled wish
My lady to interrogate of things
Concerning which my mind was in suspense.
One thing I meant, another answered me;
I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw
An Old Man habited like the glorious people.
O'er flowing was he in his eyes and cheeks
With joy benign, in attitude of pity
As to a tender father is becoming.
And 'She, where is she?' instantly I said;
Whence he: 'To put an end to thy desire,
Me Beatrice hath sent from mine own place.
And if thou lookest up to the third round
Of the first rank, again shalt thou behold her
Upon the throne her merits have assigned her.'
Without reply I lifted up mine eyes,
And saw her, as she made herself a crown
Reflecting from herself the eternal rays.
Not from that region which the highest thunders
Is any mortal eye so far removed,
In whatsoever sea it deepest sinks,
As there from Beatrice my sight; but this
Was nothing unto me; because her image
Descended not to me by medium blurred."
(XXXI, 52.)
St. Bernard, the mystic, celebrating the Blessed Virgin's praises in a
marvelous outburst of song, unsurpassed for lyrical beauty, beseeches
her intercession that Dante may see God face to face.
"Now doth this man, who from the lowest depth
Of the universe as far as here has seen
One after one the spiritual lives,
Supplicate thee through grace for so much power
That with his eyes he may uplift himself
Higher towards the uttermost salvation.
And I, who never burned for my own seeing
More than I do for his, all of my prayers
Proffer to thee, and pray they come not short,
That thou wouldst scatter from him every cloud
Of his mortality so with thy prayers,
That the Chief Pleasure be to him displayed.
Still farther do I pray thee, Queen, who canst
Whate'er thou wilt, that sound thou mayst preserve
After so great a vision his affections.
Let thy protection conquer human movements;
See Beatrice and all the blessed ones
My prayers to second clasp their hands to thee!
The eyes beloved and revered of God,
Fastened upon the speaker, showed to us
How grateful unto her are prayers devout;
Then unto the Eternal Light they turned,
On which it is not credible could be
By any creature bent an eye so clear."
(XXXIII, 22.)
The prayer is granted. "My vision becoming undimmed, more and more
entered the beam of light which in itself is Truth." (XXXIII, 52.) The
veil is removed. He gazes into the limitless depths of the Divinity. He
enjoys the Beatific Vision.
First he sees by immediate intuition the Divine Essence in its creative
power, the examplar of all substances, modes and accidents united in
harmony and love; then he beholds the Creator Himself and all the
divine perfections and all the eternal plans of God. Clear to the poet
now is the truth of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity unveiled in
circles of light like rainbows of green, white and red of equal
circumference, the Second being as it were the splendor of the First and
the Third emanating from the two others. Unravelled also is the mystery
of the two natures human and divine, in the divine person of Christ seen
in human form in the second luminous circle. But the Vision is so far
above the poet's memory to retain or his speech to express that he
cannot find words to make intelligible the splendor he beholds or the
rapture he experiences.
"Oh grace abounding, wherein I presumed to fix my look on the eternal
light so long that I consumed my sight thereon! Within its depths I saw
ingathered, bound by love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all the
universe; substance and accidents and their relations, as though
together fused, after such fashion that what I tell of is one simple
flame.
"In the profound and shining being of the deep light appeared to me
three circles, of three colours and one magnitude; one by the second as
Iris by Iris seemed reflected, and the third seemed a fire breathed
equally from one and from the other. Oh, but how scant the utterance,
and how faint, to my conceit! and it, to what I saw, is such that it
sufficeth not to call it little. O light eternal who only in thyself
abidest, only thyself dost understand, and to thyself, self-understood,
self-understanding, turnest love and smiling! That circling which
appeared in thee to be conceived as a reflected light, by mine eyes
scanned some little, in itself, of its own colour, seemed to be painted
with our effigy, and thereat my sight was all committed to it.
"To the high fantasy here power failed; but already my desire and will
were rolled--even as a wheel that moveth equally--by the Love that moves
the sun and the other stars." (XXXIII, 82.)