Sweetly pervading heaven above,
To sailors rough
Sang syrens sweeter never.
Thou enterest through eye and ear,
Senses and soul pervading,
Thou givest to the heart great cheer,
A guerdon dear,
A glory never fading.
The poet who wrote of Isolde's love potion here calls the Queen of Heaven a potion sweet of love, a strange metaphor to use in connection with the Mary of dogma. Another characteristic frequently alluded to is her sweet perfume, an attribute which we to-day do not look upon as exclusively celestial.
Quaintly delicate and tender are the love-songs of Brother Hans, an otherwise unknown monk of the fourteenth century. He himself tells us that he deserted his earthly mistress for the Queen of Heaven. Perhaps the dualism between earthly and transcendent love has never been expressed more clearly than by him; for in his case the worshipping love did not gradually lead up to Mary, the essence of womanhood, but an earthly love had to be killed so that the pure heavenly love could live.