XX.
After this canzone had been somewhat divulged to the world, inasmuch as one of my friends had heard it, a desire moved him to beg me that I should tell him what Love is, entertaining perhaps through the words he had heard a hope of me beyond my desert. Wherefore I, thinking that after such a treatise it were beautiful to treat somewhat of Love, and thinking that my friend was to be served, resolved to speak words in which I would treat of Love, and then I devised this sonnet: —
Love is but one thing with the gentle heart,
As in the saying of the sage we find;
Thus one from other cannot be apart,
More than the reason from the reasoning mind.
When Nature amorous becomes, she makes
Love then her Lord, the heart his dwelling-place,
Within which, sleeping, his repose he takes,
Sometimes for brief, and sometimes for long space.
Beauty in lady sage doth then appear
Which pleaseth so the eyes, that in the heart
Desire for the pleasing thing hath birth;
And sometimes it so long abideth there,
It makes Love’s spirit wide awake to start:
The like in lady doth a man of worth.
This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first, I tell of him in respect of what he is potentially; in the second, I tell of him in respect to his potentiality being brought into act. The second begins here: “Beauty in lady sage.” The first is divided into two; in the first, I tell in what subject this potentiality exists; in the second, I tell how this subject and this potentiality are brought together into being, and how one is related to the other, as form to matter. The second begins here: “When Nature.” Then, when I say: “Beauty in lady,” I tell how this potentiality is brought into act; and first, how it is brought in man, then, how it is brought in woman, — here: “The like in lady.”