CANTO XII. Second circle of the spirits of wise religious men,
doctors of the Church and teachers.--St. Bonaventura narrates the
life of St. Dominic, and tells the names of those who form the
circle with him.

Soon as the blessed flame uttered the last word of its speech the
holy mill-stone[1] began to rotate, and had not wholly turned in
its gyration before another enclosed it with a circle, and
matched motion with motion, song with song; song which in those
sweet pipes so surpasses our Muses, our Sirens, as a primal
splendor that which it reflects.[2] As two bows parallel and of
like colors are turned across a thin cloud when Juno gives the
order to her handmaid[3] (the outer one born of that within,
after the manner of the speech of that wandering one[4] whom love
consumed, as the sun does vapors), and make the people here
presageful, because of the covenant which God established with
Noah concerning the world, that it is nevermore to be flooded; so
the two garlands of those sempiternal roses turned around us, and
so the outer responded to the inner. After the dance and the
other great festivity, alike of the singing and of the flaming,
light with light joyous and courteous, had become quiet together
at an instant and with one will (just as the eyes which must
needs together close and open to the pleasure that moves them),
from the heart of one of the new lights a voice proceeded, which
made me seem as the needle to the star in turning me to its place
and it began,[5] "The love which makes me beautiful draws me to
speak of the other leader by whom[6] so well has been spoken here
of mine. It is fit that where one is the other be led in, so that
as they served in war with one another, together likewise may