“And as a slope in water from its depth
is mirrored, as if to see itself adorned,
when it is rich with green and flowers bright,
so, standing over the light all around,
I saw reflected in more than a thousand thresholds
all who from us have made their way back up.
And if the lowest rank contains in itself
such great light, how vast must be the breadth
of this rose in its most distant petals!”
Canto XXX of Paradiso, lines 38-45