These standards to the rearward longer were
  Than was my sight; and, as it seemed to me,
  Ten paces were the outermost apart.

Under so fair a heaven as I describe
  The four and twenty Elders, two by two,
  Came on incoronate with flower-de-luce.

They all of them were singing: "Blessed thou
  Among the daughters of Adam art, and blessed
  For evermore shall be thy loveliness."

After the flowers and other tender grasses
  In front of me upon the other margin
  Were disencumbered of that race elect,

Even as in heaven star followeth after star,
  There came close after them four animals,
  Incoronate each one with verdant leaf.

Plumed with six wings was every one of them,
  The plumage full of eyes; the eyes of Argus
  If they were living would be such as these.

Reader! to trace their forms no more I waste
  My rhymes; for other spendings press me so,
  That I in this cannot be prodigal.

But read Ezekiel, who depicteth them
  As he beheld them from the region cold
  Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire;

And such as thou shalt find them in his pages,
  Such were they here; saving that in their plumage
  John is with me, and differeth from him.

The interval between these four contained
  A chariot triumphal on two wheels,
  Which by a Griffin's neck came drawn along;

And upward he extended both his wings
  Between the middle list and three and three,
  So that he injured none by cleaving it.

So high they rose that they were lost to sight;
  His limbs were gold, so far as he was bird,
  And white the others with vermilion mingled.

Not only Rome with no such splendid car
  E'er gladdened Africanus, or Augustus,
  But poor to it that of the Sun would be,--

That of the Sun, which swerving was burnt up
  At the importunate orison of Earth,
  When Jove was so mysteriously just.

Three maidens at the right wheel in a circle
  Came onward dancing; one so very red
  That in the fire she hardly had been noted.

The second was as if her flesh and bones
  Had all been fashioned out of emerald;
  The third appeared as snow but newly fallen.

And now they seemed conducted by the white,
  Now by the red, and from the song of her
  The others took their step, or slow or swift.

Upon the left hand four made holiday
  Vested in purple, following the measure
  Of one of them with three eyes m her head.

In rear of all the group here treated of
  Two old men I beheld, unlike in habit,
  But like in gait, each dignified and grave.

One showed himself as one of the disciples
  Of that supreme Hippocrates, whom nature
  Made for the animals she holds most dear;

Contrary care the other manifested,
  With sword so shining and so sharp, it caused
  Terror to me on this side of the river.

Thereafter four I saw of humble aspect,
  And behind all an aged man alone
  Walking in sleep with countenance acute.

And like the foremost company these seven
  Were habited; yet of the flower-de-luce
  No garland round about the head they wore,

But of the rose, and other flowers vermilion;
  At little distance would the sight have sworn
  That all were in a flame above their brows.

And when the car was opposite to me
  Thunder was heard; and all that folk august
  Seemed to have further progress interdicted,

There with the vanward ensigns standing still.