o excites his dogs, is
here illustrated by a winged heart, which is sent out of the cage, in
which it lived idle and quiet, to make its nest on high and bring up its
fledglings, its thoughts, the time being come in which those impediments
are removed, which were caused, externally, in a thousand different
ways, and internally by natural feebleness. He dismisses his heart then
to make more magnificent surroundings, urging him to the highest
propositions and intentions, now that those powers of the soul are more
fully fledged, which Plato signifies by the two wings, and he commits
him to the guidance of that god, who, by the unseeing crowd, is
considered insane and blind, that is Love, who, by the mercy and favour
of heaven, has power to transform him into that nature towards which he
aspires, or into that state from which, a pilgrim, he is banished.
Whence he says, "Come not back to me till thou art mine," and not
unworthily may I say with that other--

Thou has left me, oh, my heart,
And thou, light of my eyes, art no more with me.

Here he describes the death of the soul, which by the Kabbalists is
called the death by kisses, symbolized in the Song of Solomon, where the
friend says:

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,
For, when he wounds me,
I suffer with a cruel love.

By others it is called sleep; the Psalmist says:

It shall be, that I give sleep unto mine eyes,
And mine eyelids shall slumber,
And I shall have in him peaceful repose.

The soul then is said to be faint, because it is dead in itself, and
alive in the object:

20.

Give heed, enthusiasts, unto the heart!
For mine condemns me to a life apart,
Bound by unmerciful and cruel ties,
He dwells with joy, there where he faints and dies.
At every hour I call him back by thoughts:
A rebel he, like gerfalcon insane,
He feels no more the hand that did restrain,
And is gone forth not to return again.
Thou beauteous beast that dost in punishment
Knit up the soul, spirit and heart content'st
With pricks, with lightnings, and with chains!
From looks, from accents, and from usages,
Which faint and burn and keep thee bound,
Where shall he that heals, that cools, and loosens thee be found?

Here the soul, sorrowful, not from real discontent, but on account of
pains which she suffers, directs the discourse to those who are affected
by passions similar to her