grip, and I know not whence this pain has come. I do not know? I
know full well that it is Love who does me this injury. How is that? Can
Love do harm? Is he not gentle and well-bred? I used to think that there
was naught but good in Love; but I have found him full of enmity. He who
has not had experience of him does not know what tricks Love plays.
He is a fool who joins his ranks; for he always seeks to harm his
followers. Upon my faith, his tricks are bad. It is poor sport to play
with him, for his game will only do me harm. What shall I do, then?
Shall I retreat? I think it would be wise to do so, but I know not
how to do it. If Love chastens and threatens me in order to teach and
instruct me, ought I to disdain my teacher? He is a fool who scorns his
master. I ought to keep and cherish the lesson which Love teaches me,
for great good may soon come of it. But I am frightened because he beats
me so. And dost thou complain, when no sign of blow or wound appears?
Art thou not mistaken? Nay, for he has wounded me so deep that he has
shot his dart to my very heart, and has not yet drawn it out again.
[213] How has he pierced thy body with it, when no wound appears
without? Tell me that, for I wish to know. How did he make it enter in?
Through the eye. Through the eye? But he has not put it out? He did not
harm the eye at all, but all the pain is in the heart. Then tell me, if
the dart passed through the eye, how is it that the eye itself is not
injured or put out. If the dart entered through the eye, why does the
heart in the breast complain, when the eye, which received the first
effect, makes no complaint of it at all? I can readily account for that:
the eye is not concerned with the understanding, nor has it any part in
it; but it is the mirror of the heart, and through this mirror passes,
without doing harm or injury, the flame which sets the heart on fire.
For is not the heart placed in the breast just like a lighted candle
which is set in a lantern? If you take the candle away no light will
shine from the lantern; but so long as the candle lasts the lantern is
not dark at all, and the flame which shines within does it no harm or
injury. Likewise with a pane of glass, which might be very strong and
solid, and yet a ray of the sun could pass through it without cracking
it at all; yet a piece of glass will never be so bright as to enable one
to see, unless a stronger light strikes its surface. Know that the same
thing i