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."

[1] "He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white
raiment."--Revelation, iii. 5.

[2] Henry VII., Emperor 1308, crowned at Milan 1311, died 1313.

[3] The Pope Clement V. ostensibly supported the Emperor Henry
VII. in his Italian expedition, but secretly manoeuvred against
him. He died in 1314, eight months after the death of Henry.
Beatrice here condemns him to the third bolgia of the eighth
circle of Hell, whither he was to follow Boniface VIII.,--him of
Anagna,--and push him deeper in the hole where the simoniacal
Popes were punished, Cf. Hell, XIX.



CANTO XXXI. The Rose of Paradise.--St. Bernard.--Prayer to
Beatrice.--The glory of the Blessed Virgin.

In form then of a pure white rose the holy host was shown to me,
which, in His own blood, Christ made His bride. But the other,[1]
which, flying, sees and sings the glory of Him who enamours it,
and the goodness which made it so great, like a swarm of bees
which one while are among the flowers and anon return to the
place where their work gets its savor, were descending into the
great flower which is adorned with so many leaves, and thence
rising up again to where their love always abides. Their faces
all were of living flame, and their wings of gold, and the rest
so white that no snow reaches that extreme. When they descended
into the flower, from bench to bench, they imparted somewhat of
the peace and of the ardor which they acquired as they fanned
their sides. Nor did the interposing of such a flying plenitude
between what was above and the flower impede the sight and the


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