Betwixt the heav’n and earth.”  Like to the fire,
That, in a cloud imprison’d doth break out
Expansive, so that from its womb enlarg’d,
It falleth against nature to the ground;
Thus in that heav’nly banqueting my soul
Outgrew herself; and, in the transport lost. 
Holds now remembrance none of what she was. 
     “Ope thou thine eyes, and mark me:  thou hast seen
Things, that empower thee to sustain my smile.” 
     I was as one, when a forgotten dream
Doth come across him, and he strives in vain
To shape it in his fantasy again,
Whenas that gracious boon was proffer’d me,
Which never may be cancel’d from the book,
Wherein the past is written.  Now were all
Those tongues to sound, that have on sweetest milk
Of Polyhymnia and her sisters fed
And fatten’d, not with all their help to boot,
Unto the thousandth parcel of the truth,
My song might shadow forth that saintly smile,
flow merely in her saintly looks it wrought. 
And with such figuring of Paradise
The sacred strain must leap, like one, that meets
A sudden interruption to his road. 
But he, who thinks how ponderous the theme,
And that ’t is lain upon a mortal shoulder,
May pardon, if it tremble with the burden. 
The track, our ventrous keel must furrow, brooks
No unribb’d pinnace, no self-sparing pilot. 
     “Why doth my face,” said Beatrice, “thus
Enamour thee, as that thou dost not turn
Unto the beautiful garden, blossoming
Beneath the rays of Christ?  Here is the rose,
Wherein the word divine was made incarnate;
And here the lilies, by whose odour known
The way of life was follow’d.”  Prompt I heard
Her bidding, and encounter once again
The strife of aching vision.  As erewhile,
Through glance of sunlight, stream’d through broken cloud,
Mine eyes a flower-besprinkled mead have seen,
Though veil’d themselves in shade; so saw I there
Legions of splendours, on whom burning rays
Shed lightnings from above, yet saw I not
The fountain whence they flow’d.  O gracious virtue! 
Thou, whose broad stamp is on them, higher up
Thou didst exalt thy glory to give room
To my o’erlabour’d sight:  when at the name
Of that fair flower, whom duly I invoke
Both morn and eve, my soul, with all her might
Collected, on the goodliest ardour fix’d. 
And, as the bright dimensions of the star
In heav’n excelling, as once here on earth
Were, in my eyeballs lively portray’d,
Lo! from within the sky a cresset fell,
Circling in fashion of a diadem,
And girt the star, and hov’ring round it wheel’d. 
     Whatever melody sounds sweetest here,
And draws the spirit most unto itself,
Might seem a rent cloud when it grates the thunder,
Compar’d unto the sounding of that lyre,
Wherewith the goodliest sapphire, that inlays
The floor of heav’n, was crown’d. " Angelic Love
I am, who thus with hov’ring flight enwheel