[1] Literally, "to envy;" hence, perhaps, "to admire," "to
praise," "to celebrate;" but the meaning is doubtful.



CANTO XIII. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks again, and explains the
relation of the wisdom of Solomon to that of Adam and of Christ,
and declares the vanity of human judgment.

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