Chaucer, Second Nonnes Tale:--
"Thou maide and mother, doughter of thy son,
Thou well of mercy, sinful soules cure,
In whom that God of bountee chees to won;
Thou humble and high over every creature,
Thou nobledest so fer forth our nature,
That no desdaine the maker had of kinde
His son in blood and flesh to clothe and winde.
Within the cloystre blisful of thy sides,
Toke mannes shape the eternal love and pees,
That of the trine compas Lord and gide is.
Whom erthe, and see, and heven out of relees
Ay herien; and thou, virgine wemmeles,
Bare of thy body (and dweltest maiden pure)
The creatour of every creature.
"Assembled is in thee magnificence
With mercy, goodnesse, and with swiche pitee,
That thou, that art the sonne of excellence,
Not only helpest hem that praien thee,
But oftentime of thy benignitee
Ful freely, or that men thin helpe beseche,
Thou goest beforne, and art hir lives leche."
See also his Ballade of Our Ladie, and La Priere de Nostre Dame.
As St. Macarius said to his soul:
"Having taken up thine abode in heaven, where thou hast God and his holy angels to
converse with, see that thou descend not thence; regard not earthly things."
Finished the ardour of desire in its accomplishment.
Aeneid, III. 442, Davidson's Tr.: "When, wafted thither, you reach the city Cumae, the hallowed lakes, and Avernus resounding through the woods, you will see the raving prophetess, who, beneath a deep rock, reveals the fates, and commits to the leaves of trees her characters and words. Whatever versesthe virgin has inscribed on the leaves, she ranges in harmonious order, and leaves in the cave enclosed by themselves:
covered they remain in their position, nor recede from their order. But when, upon turning the hinge, a small breath of wind has blown upon them, and the door [by opening] hath discomposed the tender leaves, she never afterward cares to catch the verses as they are fluttering in the hollow cave, nor to recover their situation, or join them together."
Luke ix. 62 : "No man having put his hand to the pough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."
Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., I. Quaest. iv. 2: "If therefore God be the first efficient cause of things, the perfections of all things must pre-exist pre-eminently in God." And Buti: "In God are all things that are made, as in the First Cause, that foresees everything."
Of all the commentaries which I have consulted, that of Buti alone sustains this rendering of the line. The rest interpret it, " What I say is but
a simple or feeble glimmer of what I saw."
There are almost as many interpretations of this passage as there are commentators. The most intelligible is, that Dante forgot in a single moment more of the glory he had seen, than the world had forgotten in five-and-twenty centuries of the Argonautic expedition, when Neptune wondered at the shadow of the first ship that ever crossed the sea.
Aristotle, Ethics I., I, Gillies's Tr. : "Since every art and every kind of knowledge, as well as all the actions and all the deliberations of men, constantly aim at something which they call good, good in general may be justly defined, that which all desire."
In the same manner the reflection of the Griffin in Beatrice's eyes, Purg. XXXI. 124, is described as changing, while the object itself remained unchanged
"Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled,
When I beheld the thing itself stand stand still,
Aud in its image it transformed itself."
Thomas Aquinas, Sum Theol., I. Quaest. XXIX. 2: "What exists by itself, and not in another, is called subsistence."
The three Persons of the Tnnity.
The second circle, or second Person of the Trinity.
The human nature of Christ; the incarnation of the Word.
In this new light of God's grace, the mystery of the union of the Divine and human nature in Christ is revealed to Dante.
Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence:--
"As a cloud. . . . .
That heareth not the loud, winds when they call,
And moveth all together, if it move at all."
I John iv. 16: " God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."