And clog it not in chains and prison here:
The God of fishers, deare thy love hath bought:
Most deare He loves; for shame, love thou as deare.”
(Stz. 24, 25.)
Heavenly love, then, whether springing from the desire within the soul to see wisdom in her beauty, or from a desire to raise the mind from a love of earth to the intelligible world, or from the desire to find a worthy object in the love of the rational in woman, when freed from all the grossness of physical passion, is a contemplative love of a less perishing beauty than can be found on earth. And just as the transition was easy from the love which God himself knows to the soul’s love of God, so was the change from the love of soul for a higher reality than earthly beauty to the immortal love of God for the soul. Thus in Sidney’s sonnet the subtle change is effected.
“Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou my mind aspire to higher things:
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beames, and humble all thy might,