He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness that ever trickled to his heart.

Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted, attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude.  He beheld, concentrated in one spot—­written in one volume of Love—­all which is diffused, and can become the subject of thought and study throughout the universe—­all substance and accident and mode—­all so compounded that they become one light.  He thought he beheld at one and the same time the oneness of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies; because, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and in the course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak of it.

But thoughts as well as words failed him; and though ever afterwards he could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he could take defect for completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain it, still the utmost he could say of what he remembered would fall as short of right speech as the sounds of an infant’s tongue while it is murmuring over the nipple; for the more he had looked at that light, the more he found in it to amaze him, so that his brain toiled with the succession of the astonishments.  He saw, in the deep but clear self-subsistence, three circles of three different colours of the same breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from both.[56]

O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so understanding, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.

The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted by its own colours with the likeness of a human face.[57]

But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathematician experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to discover the principle by which he is to square it.

He did, however, in a manner discern it.  A flash of light was vouchsafed him for the purpose; but the light left him no power to impart the discernment; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift.  Desire became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the stars.[58]

[Footnote 1:  A curious and happy image.

  “Tornan de’ nostri visi le postille
  Debili si, che perla in bianca fronte
  Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille: 
  Tali vid’ io piu facce a parlar pronte.” ]