THE FIRST BOOK.

The beam of the eye reaches what the eyebrow’s arch overlooks,
Even the fixed stars of heaven themselves, but no higher:
Would anyone for this reason dare to firmly and surely conclude
That above the eighth sphere original: "achtste ront". In the Ptolemaic geocentric model used in Vondel's time, the "eighth sphere" was the firmament containing the fixed stars, beyond which lay the higher heavens., sown full of fixed stars,
No substance nor being hovers on high,
Because it hovers higher than the powerless eye?
What madness this would be! No power, raised to its peak,
Rises higher than its mark and utmost capacity.
Nature has her design, and landmark, and path,
And her own limit, which she cannot cross:
Therefore one surely concludes that the eye cannot define
What extends wider than the sight of the eyes and their beams:
Why then does the human brain set a measure
To the being that does not allow itself to be defined by the eye?

God is not known from before original: "van vore gekent". This refers to the philosophical concept of a priori knowledge—knowing something through its preceding cause. Since God has no cause before Him, He cannot be known in this way..

That God is cannot be clearly demonstrated
Through an older cause: for His being, worthy of crowning,
Has never known a cause above itself, through which
One might know the eternal being and clearly behold it from before.
Nor can one forge this proof from God’s essence,
As if from something that runs before God according to reason;
Since the essentiality of a thing is not shown by its essence,
While the dispute still hangs in court, and looks
To a knowability of this pleaded being,
And whether the being exists from which the disputes arose.
The understanding can hardly, or rather never,
Comprehend such a treasure, the uncomprehended Lord;
No tongue, no language is enough to praise and fully laud Him:
That knowledge goes far beyond understanding and reason.
One cannot scoop the rich sea into a nutshell:
The shell is much too small, the water all too great.
No human can span the heavens with his hand.
No gnat understands the spirit of the wisest men.
Who can endure the midday sun in the sight
Of the eyes, which are all too weak in that all-radiating light?