He pleads for the recognition of the body, contending that it is not the enemy but the companion of the soul:
Soul into the soul may flow
Though it to body first repair.
The realistic philosophy of love has never been set forth with greater intellectual vehemence:
So must pure lovers’ souls descend
T’ affections and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.
To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal’d may look;