"Very few are the men who raise themselves to the heaven; to him who lives in the fire of love, and drinks of its poison, (for to love is one of life's fatal conditions,) if grace transport him not towards supreme and incorruptible beauties--if all his desires learn not to direct themselves thither--Ah! what miseries overwhelm the condition of lover!"--(_Sonnet_ 10.)
But this declaration has not been applied to all passionate and deep affections:
"No, it is not always a mortal and impious fault to burn with an immense love for a perfect beauty, if this love afterwards leave the heart so softened that the arrows of divine beauty may penetrate it."
wings for its sublime flight: often its ardour is the first step by which, discontented with earth, the soul remounts towards her Creator."--(_Sonnet_ 8.)
Transported with this thought, in which he feels the passion to which he has yielded at once transforming and tranquillising itself, Michel Angelo gives to it in his verses the most eloquent and most ingenious developments.
"No, it is not a mortal thing which my eyes perceived, when in them was reflected, for the first time, the light of thine; but in thy look, my soul, inquiet, because it mounts towards its object without repose, has conceived the hope of finding her peace."
"She ascends, stretching her wings towards the abode from whence she descended! The beauty which charms the eyes calls to her on her flight; but, finding her weak and fugitive, she passes onwards to the universal form, the divine archetype."
This expression, and many others dispersed throughout the collection, show that he had profited more than he cared to acknowledge by the discourses of the Platonic Academy.
"Yes, I perceive it; that which must die can offer no repose to the wise man. * * * That which kills the soul is not love; it is the unbridled disorder of the senses. Love can render our souls perfect here below, and yet more in heaven!"--(_Sonnet_ 2.)
"From the stars most near to the empyrean, descends sometimes a brightness which attracts our desires towards them: it is that which is called love!"--(_Mad._ 8.)
But this celestial route demands extraordinary efforts on the part of him who aspires to travel it: