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Michelangelo - Sonnet LIII - An ardent love of a great beauty is not always wrong
Identifier
024476
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Michelangelo – Sonnets [translated by Elizabeth Jennings]
Sonnet LIII
An ardent love of a great beauty is
Not always wrong, for such a love can melt
The heart and let divine desire be felt;
The heavenly dart may penetrate with ease.
Love wakes prepared and soon adjusts its wings;
Such flight as it will make cannot compare
With those first stumbling steps, but these will bear
The soul up to the maker of all things.
To this, the love of which I speak aspires.
Woman is different and seldom worth
The fiery love which only strong hearts know.
One pulls me to the heavens, the other to earth.
One in the soul dwells, one in sensual fires
And to attain base things will draw the bow.