close in the path of the herd his brethren."

The blessed bird for a moment was silent; but as, at the going down of
the sun, the heavens are darkened, and then break forth into innumerable
stars which the sun lights up,[27] so the splendours within the figure
of the bird suddenly became more splendid, and broke forth into songs
too beautiful for mortal to remember.

O dulcet love, that dost shew thee forth in smiles, how ardent was thy
manifestation in the lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere
thoughts of those pious hearts!

After the gems in that glittering figure had ceased chiming their
angelic songs, the poet seemed to hear the murmur of a river which comes
falling from rock to rock, and chews, by the fulness of its tone, the
abundance of its mountain spring; and as the sound of the guitar is
modulated on the neck of it, and the breath of the pipe is accordant to
the spiracle from which it issues, so the murmuring within the eagle
suddenly took voice, and, rising through the neck, again issued forth in
words. The bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its eye; because,
of all the fires that composed its figure, those that sparkled in the
eye were the noblest. The spirit (it said) which Dante beheld in the
pupil was that of the royal singer who danced before the ark, now
enjoying the reward of his superiority to vulgar discernment. Of the
five spirits that composed the eyebrow, the one nearest the beak was
Trajan, now experienced above all others in the knowledge of what it
costs not to follow Christ, by reason of his having been in hell
before he was translated to heaven. Next to Trajan was Hezekiah,
whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his death: next Hezekiah,
Constantine, though, in letting the pope become a prince instead of
a pastor, he had unwittingly brought destruction on the world: next
Constantine, William the Good of Sicily, whose death is not more
lamented than the lives of those who contest his crown and lastly, next
William, Riphaeus the Trojan. "What erring mortal," cried the bird,
"would believe it possible to find Riphaeus the Trojan among the
blest?--but so it is; and he now knows more respecting the divine grace
than mortals do, though even he discerns it not to the depth."[28]

The bird again relapsing into silence, appeared to repose on the
happiness of its thoughts, like the lark which, after quivering and
expatiating through all its airy warble, becomes mute and conte