What “the three-fold golden chain” is that binds “the soul select” to God no Catholic needs to be told. Free and loyal self-sacrifice, in a world where self-sacrifice, whether we like it or not, is necessary and must be endured, brings us nearest and makes us likest to Him, the true Eros who “emptied himself for us.” These lines will help us to read the riddle of the “Unknown Eros,” “some note” of whose “renown and high behest” the poet thinks might thus “in enigma be express’d”:
“There lies the crown
Which all thy longing cures.
Refuse it, Mortal, that it may be yours!
It is a spirit though it seems red gold;
And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.
Refuse it, though refusing be despair;
And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.”
This thought again is more fully wrought out in the conclusion of the same ode, “Legem Tuam Dilexi”:
“... For to have naught