her version of this very beautiful sonnet.

No mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes
When perfect peace in thy fair face I found;
But far within, where all is holy ground,
My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Nor all the shows of beauty shed around
This fair false world her wings to earth have bound;
Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flies.
Nay, things that suffer death, quench not the fire
Of deathless spirits; nor eternity
Serves sordid Time, that withers all things rare.
Not love but lawless impulse is desire:
That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair
Our friends on earth, fairer in death on high.

LIII. This is the doctrine of the Symposium; the scorn of merely sexual
love is also Platonic.

LIV. Another sonnet on the theme of the Uranian as distinguished from
the Vulgar love. See below, LVL., for a parallel to the second terzet.

LV. The date maybe 1532. The play on words in the first quatrain and
the first terzet is Shakespearian.

LIX. Two notes, appended to the two autographs of this sonnet, show
that M.A. regarded it as a _jeu d'esprit, 'Per carnovale par lecito far
qualche pazzia a chi non va in maschera.' 'Questo non e fuoco da
carnovale, pero vel mando di quaresima; e a voi mi rachomando. Vostro
Michelagniolo.'_

LXL. Date 1547. No sonnet presents more difficulties than this, in
which M.A. has availed himself of a passage in the _Cratylus_ of
Plato. The divine hammer spoken of in the second couplet is the ideal
pattern after which the souls of men are fashioned; and this in the
first terzet seems to be identified with Vittoria Colonna. In the
second terzet he regards his own soul as imperfect, lacking the final
touches which it might have received from hers. See XIV. for a
somewhat similar conceit.

LXIV. The image is that of a glowing wood coal smouldering away to
embers amid its own ashes.

LXV. Date 1554. Addressed _A messer Giorgio Vasari, amico e pittor
singulare_, with this letter: _Messer Giorgio, amico caro, voi direte
ben ch' io sie vecchio e pazzo a voler far sonetti; ma perche molti
dicono ch' io son rimbambito, ho voluto far l'uficio mio, ec. A di 19
di settembre 1554. Vostro Michelagniolo Buonarroti in Roma_.

LXVL, LXVII. These two sonnets were sent to Giorgio Vasari in 1555(?)
with this letter: _Messer Giorgio, io vi mando dua sonetti; e benche
sie