ut destroyed, bound by the
shackles of desire. To Dante, to whom life and poem were one, as well as
to Goethe-Faust, the memory of first love remained typical of all
genuine, profound feeling; with Dante love and Beatrice are identical.
In the soul of these two men metaphysical love, the longing for the
eternal in woman, which they did not find on earth, gradually awoke to
life. Both place the glorified mistress by the side of another woman,
the Catholic Queen of Heaven. In Dante's, as well as in Goethe's
Paradise two women, a personal one and a universal one, are loved and
adored. The second woman, too, has her exclusive, ecstatic worshipper.
St. Bernard, the _Doctor Marianus_ of Dante, prostrating himself before
her, addresses to her the sublime prayer which begins:

Oh, Virgin! Mother! Daughter of thy Son!

and in _Faust_ we meet again the _Doctor Marianus_ burning--as the
representative of the totality of her worshippers--with the "sacred joy
of love" (Dante says

The Queen of Heaven for whom my soul
Burns with love's rapture)

and pronouncing the most beautiful prayer to the Madonna which the world
possesses, and which is almost identical with Dante's:

Virgin, pure from taint of earth,
Mother, we adore thee,
With the Godhead one by birth,
Queen, we bow before thee!

And, prostrated before her:

Penitents, her saviour-glance
Gratefully beholding,
To beatitude advance,
Still new pow'rs unfolding!
Thine each better thought shall be,
To thy service given!
Holy Virgin, gracious be,
Mother, Queen of Heaven!

In the Divine Comedy St. Bernard prays:

So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great,
That he who grace desireth and comes not
To thee for aidence, fain would have desire
Fly without wings.

The _Chorus mysticus_ could equally well form the conclusion of the
_Comedy_. The _inadequate_ which to _fulness groweth_, is what the
Provencals already, in their time, realised as _folly_, as a paradox:
the metaphysical love of woman, for ever remaining dream and longing,
always unfulfilled, the eternal-feminine.

As the _Mater Gloriosa_ appears, Dante exclaims:

Thenceforward what I saw
Was not for words to speak, nor memory's self
To stand against such outrage on her skill.

And Goethe:

In starry wreath is seen
Lofty and tender,
Midmost the heavenly queen,
Known by her sple