my first word, there appeared to me in a vision.
It seized and held me so that I forgot
to offer her my thanks and my confession.
As in clear glass when it polished bright,
or in a still and limpid pool whose waters
are not so deep that the bottom is lost from sight,
a footnote of our lineaments will show,
so pallid that our pupils could as soon
make out a pearl upon a milk white brow--
so I saw many faces eager to speak,
and fell to the error opposite the one
that kindled love for a pool in the smitten Greek.
And thinking the pale traces I saw there
was reflected images, I turned around
to face the source-but my eyes met empty air.
I turned around like one beguiled,
and took my line of sight from my sweet guide
whose sacred eyes grew radiant and as she smiled.
"Are you surprised that I smile at this childish act of reasoning?" she said,
"since even now you dare not trust your sense of the true fact,
but turn, as usual, back to vacancy?"

-Dante Alighieri Paradiso