Yet if she turn again
Her lucid eyes toward home of their desire,
With arid bough more ardent grows the fire.
13 [XVIII] The idea that only through contemplating the person of the beloved can the soul transcend from time to eternity is familiar in the later compositions of Michelangelo. Compare sonnet 21 [LVI].
14 [XIX] The same conception receives a different treatment; mortal beauty is now represented as exercising too potent an attraction, and preventing the desire from mounting beyond it.
15 [XXI] The thought has been elaborated in a modern sense by Lowell in his “Endymion:”—
[101]
Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once more
An inaccessible splendor to adore,
A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth