Incredible how fair; and, from the tide,
There ever and anon, outstarting, flew
Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flow’rs
Did set them, like to rubies chas’d in gold;
Then, as if drunk with odors, plung’d again
Into the wondrous flood; from which, as one
Re’enter’d, still another rose.  “The thirst
Of knowledge high, whereby thou art inflam’d,
To search the meaning of what here thou seest,
The more it warms thee, pleases me the more. 
But first behooves thee of this water drink,
Or ere that longing be allay’d.”  So spake
The day-star of mine eyes; then thus subjoin’d: 
“This stream, and these, forth issuing from its gulf,
And diving back, a living topaz each,
With all this laughter on its bloomy shores,
Are but a preface, shadowy of the truth
They emblem:  not that, in themselves, the things
Are crude; but on thy part is the defect,
For that thy views not yet aspire so high.” 
Never did babe, that had outslept his wont,
Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk,
As I toward the water, bending me,
To make the better mirrors of mine eyes
In the refining wave; and, as the eaves
Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith
Seem’d it unto me turn’d from length to round,
Then as a troop of maskers, when they put
Their vizors off, look other than before,
The counterfeited semblance thrown aside;
So into greater jubilee were chang’d
Those flowers and sparkles, and distinct I saw
Before me either court of heav’n displac’d. 
     O prime enlightener! thou who crav’st me strength
On the high triumph of thy realm to gaze! 
Grant virtue now to utter what I kenn’d,
    There is in heav’n a light, whose goodly shine
Makes the Creator visible to all
Created, that in seeing him alone
Have peace; and in a circle spreads so far,
That the circumference were too loose a zone
To girdle in the sun.  All is one beam,
Reflected from the summit of the first,
That moves, which being hence and vigour takes,
And as some cliff, that from the bottom eyes
Its image mirror’d in the crystal flood,
As if ’t admire its brave appareling
Of verdure and of flowers:  so, round about,
Eyeing the light, on more than million thrones,
Stood, eminent, whatever from our earth
Has to the skies return’d.  How wide the leaves
Extended to their utmost of this rose,
Whose lowest step embosoms such a space
Of ample radiance!  Yet, nor amplitude
Nor height impeded, but my view with ease
Took in the full dimensions of that joy. 
Near or remote, what there avails, where God
Immediate rules, and Nature, awed, suspends
Her sway?  Into the yellow of the rose
Perennial, which in bright expansiveness,
Lays forth its gradual blooming, redolent
Of praises to the never-wint’ring sun,
As one, who fain would speak yet holds his peace,
Beatrice led me; and, “Behold,” she said,