Let him imagine,[1] who desires to understand well that which I now saw (and let him retain the image like a firm rock, while I am speaking), fifteen stars which in different regions vivify the heaven with brightness so great that it overcomes all thickness of the air; let him imagine that Wain[2] for which the bosom of our heaven suffices both night and day, so that in the turning of its pole it disappears not; let him imagine the mouth of that horn[3] which begins at the point of the axle on which the primal wheel goes round,—to have made of themselves two signs in the heavens, like that which the daughter of Minos made, when she felt the frost of death,[4] and one to have its rays within the other, and both to revolve in such manner that one should go first and the other after; and he will have as it were the shadow of the true constellation, and of the double dance, which was circling the point where I was; because it is as much beyond our wont as the motion of the heaven which outspeeds all the rest is swifter than the movement of the Chiana.[5] There was sung riot Bacchus, not Paean, but three Persons in a divine nature, and it and the human in one Person. The singing and the revolving completed each its measure, and those holy lights gave attention to us, making themselves happy from care to care.[6] [1] To form an idea of the brightness of the two circles of spirits, let the reader imagine fifteen of the brightest separate stars, joined with the seven stars of the Great Bear, and with the two brightest of the Lesser Bear, to form two constellations like Ariadne's Crown, and to revolve one within the other, one following the movement of the other. [2] Charles's Wain, the Great Bear, which never sets. [3] The Lesser Bear may be imagined as having the shape of a horn, of which the small end is near the pole of the heavens around which the Primum Mobile revolves. [4] When Ariadne died of grief because of her desertion by Theseus, her garland was changed into the constellation known as Ariadne's Crown. [5] The Chiana is one of the most sluggish of the streams of Tuscany. [6] Rejoicing in the change from dance and song to tranquillity for the sake of giving satisfaction to Dante.