the limits sanctioned by her famous teachers--ventures into no new sphere, hazards no anticipations in which they have not preceded it, and is content with adding to the poetry which it elicits from their ideas, a beauty which it is able to conceive apart altogether from bodily form--the beauty, infinite in its variety, of the expression of the human eye and smile--the beauty of light, of sound, of motion. And when his song mounts to its last strain of triumph, and the poet's thought, imagination, and feeling of beauty, tasked to the utmost, nor failing under the weight of glory which they have to express, breathe themselves forth in words, higher than which no poetry has ever risen, and represent, in images transcending sense, and baffling it, yet missing not one of those deep and transporting sympathies which they were to touch, the sight, eye to eye, of the Creator by the creature--he beholds the gathering together, in the presence of God, of "all that from our earth has to the skies returned," and of the countless orders of their thrones mirrored in His light-- Mira Quanto è 'l convento delle bianche stole-- under a figure already taken into the ceremonial of the Church--the mystic Rose, whose expanding leaves image forth the joy of the heavenly Jerusalem, both triumphant and militant.[108] [Footnote 107: See an article in the _Brit. Critic_, No. 65, p. 120.] [Footnote 108: See the form of benediction of the "Rosa d'oro." _Rituum Ecclesiæ Rom. Libri Tres._ fol. xxxv. Venet. 1516. Form of giving: "Accipe rosam de manibus nostris ... per quam designatus gaudium utriusque Hierusalem triumphantis scilicet et militantis ecclesiæ per quam omnibus Christi fidelibus manifestatur flos ipse pretiosissimus qui est gaudium et corona sanctorum omnium." He alludes to it in the _Convito_, iv. 29. O isplendor di Dio, per cu' io vidi L'alto trionfo del regno verace, Dammi virtù a dir com'io lo vidi. Lume è lassù, che visibile face Lo creatore a quella creatura, Che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace: E si distende in circular figura In tanto, che la sua circonferenza Sarebbe al Sol troppo larga cintura. * * * * E come clivo in acqua di suo imo Si specchia quasi per vedersi adorno, Quanto è nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo; Sì soprastando al lume intorno intorno Vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie, Quanto di noi lassù fatto ha ritorno. E se l'infimo grado in sè raccoglie Sì grande lume, quant'è la larghezza Di questa rosa nell'estreme foglie? * * * *