Light is thereabove which makes the Creator visible to that creature which has its peace only in seeing Him; and it is extended in a circular figure so far that its circumference would be too wide a girdle for the sun. Its whole appearance is made of a ray reflected from the summit of the First Moving Heaven,[1] which therefrom takes its life and potency. And as a hill mirrors itself in water at its base, as if to see itself adorned, rich as it is with verdure and with flowers, so ranged above the light, round and round about, on more than a thousand seats, I saw mirrored all who of us have returned on high. And if the lowest row gather within itself so great a light, how vast is the spread of this rose in its outermost leaves! My sight lost not itself in the breadth and in the height, but took in all the quantity and the quality of that joy. There near and far nor add nor take away; for where God immediately governs the natural law is of no relevancy. [1] The Primum Mobile. Into the yellow of the sempiternal rose, which spreads wide, rises in steps, and is redolent with odor of praise unto the Sun that makes perpetual spring, Beatrice, like one who is silent and wishes to speak, drew me, and said, “Behold, how vast is the convent of the white stoles![1] See our city, how wide its circuit! See our benches so full that few people are now awaited here. On that great seat, on which thou holdest thine eye because of the crown which already is set above it, ere thou suppest at this wedding feast will sit the soul (which below will be imperial) of the high Henry who, to set Italy straight, will come ere she is ready.[2] The blind cupidity which bewitches you has made you like the little child who dies of hunger, and drives away his nurse. And such a one will then be prefect in the divine forum that openly or covertly he will not go with him along one road;[3] but short while thereafter shall he be endured by God in the holy office; for he shall be thrust down for his deserts, there where Simon Magus is, and shall make him of Anagna go lower.” [1] “He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment.”—Revelation, iii. 5. [2] Henry VII., Emperor 1308, crowned at Milan 1311, died 1313. [3] The Pope Clement V. ostensibly supported the Emperor Henry VII. in his Italian expedition, but secretly manoeuvred against him. He died in 1314, eight months after the death of Henry. Beatrice here condemns him to the third bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell, whither he was to follow Boniface VIII.,—him of Anagna,—and push him deeper in the hole where the simoniacal Popes were punished, Cf. Hell, XIX. CANTO XXXI. The Rose of Paradise.—St. Bernard.—Prayer to Beatrice.—The glory of the Blessed Virgin.