"
In heaven indeed more than upon earth she enamours the poet. There
divested of her mortal veil, to his eyes she
"grew perfectly and spiritually fair,"
leading him to fit himself to put on immortality. The passion of his
boyhood has now become the ennobling ideal of his life. Sustaining and
stimulating him, saving him from himself, ever leading him upward and
onward, his angelicized lady is an abiding presence with him whether he
is deep in the contemplation of the study of philosophy and the learning
of the ancients, or engaged in the activity of military or political
life, or as homeless wayfarer in exile, making his way from place to
place. When he falls from grace it is Beatrice who disturbs his peace of
mind by "a battle of thoughts." It is the "strong image" of Beatrice who
comes to him as he had seen her as a child, raises him from moral
obliquity, fills him with the very essence of the spiritual. Then he has
a wonderful vision--"a vision in which I saw things which made me
resolve to speak no more of this blessed one (Beatrice) until I could
more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this I study to the utmost
of my power as she truly knows: So that if it shall please Him through
whom all things live that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to
say of her what was never said of any woman.
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