"How rash and how unworthy are the understandings, which bring down to the level of the senses this beauty whose approaches aid the true intelligence to remount to the skies. But feeble eyes cannot go from the mortal to the divine;[58] never will they raise themselves to that throne, where, without the grace from on high, it is a vain thought to think of rising."
Michel Angelo believed that he recognised these characteristics, as rare as sublime, in the love which pervaded his own heart.
"The life of my love is not the all in my heart. * * This affection turns to that point where no earthly weakness, no guilty thought, could exist."
"Love, when my soul left the presence of her Creator, made of her a pure eye, of thee a splendour, and my ardent desire finds it every hour in that which must, alas! one day die of thee."
"Like as heat and fire, so is the Beautiful inseparable from the Eternal. * * * I see Paradise in thy eyes, and so return there where I loved thee before this life,[59] I recur every hour to consume myself under thy looks."—(Sonnet 6.)
He writes elsewhere, with a singular mixture of affectionate ardour and metaphysical boldness,—
"I know not if this is, in thee, the prolific light from its Supreme Author which my soul feels, or if from the mysterious treasures of her memory some other beauty, earlier perceived, shines with thy aspect in my heart."[60]
"Or if the brilliant ray of thy former existence is reflected in my soul, leaving behind this kind of painful joy, which perhaps, at this moment, is the cause of the tears I shed;"
"But after all, that which I feel, and see, which guides me, is not with me, is not in me, * * sometimes I imagine that thou aidest me to distinguish it." * * * * (Sonnet 7.)
It is easy to conjecture the danger of this inclination to metaphysical speculation for an ardent and subtile genius, which, even in its works of art, has left the proof of a constant disposition towards an obscure mysticism or a sombre austerity. Michel Angelo was enabled to avoid these two dangers, on one or the other of which he would have seen his genius wrecked, by the noble confidence which he ever maintained in "the two beacons of his navigation," tenderness of heart, and pure worship of beauty.
Thus, we shall see with what outpouring he proclaims the necessity, for the human soul, to attach itself strongly to some generous love:
"The memory of the eyes, and this hope which suffices to my life, and more to my happiness, * * * reason and passion, love and nature, constrain me to fix my regard upon thee during the whole time given me. * * * Eyes serene and sparkling; he who lives not in you is not yet born!"
And again:
"It is to thee that it belongs to bring out from the coarse and rude bark within which my soul is imprisoned, that which has brought and linked together in my intelligence, reason strength, and love of the good." (Mad. 10.)