CHAPTER XII
OF THE FELICITY AND SWEETNESS OF GOD'S LOVE: AND OF THE
NIGHTINGALE'S SONG: AND PRAYER FOR PERSEVERANCE OF TRUE GHOSTLY SONG THAT
WORLDLY LOVERS HAVE NOT
Sweeter delight I know not than in my
heart to sing Thee Jesu, whom I love, a song of Thy praise. A better and more
plenteous felicity I know not then to feel in mind the sweet heat of love. Of
all things I hold it best to set Jesu in my heart and desire no other thing. He
truly has a good beginning of love that has loving tears, with sweet longing
and desire for things everlasting.
Truly Christ as it were languishes in our love,
whiles He to get us hied to the Cross with so great heat; but it is well said
in play `love goes before and leads the dawn.' It was nought but love that put
Christ thus low.
Come my Saviour to comfort my soul; make me
stable in Thy love so that I never cease to love Thee. Do away sorrow when I
must pass, for there is none such a sinner that can not joy if he be perfectly
turned to Thee. O sweetest Jesu have mind of Thy mercy, so that my life may be
light and fulfilled with virtue that I may overcome my strong enemy. I pray
Thee give me health in this wise that I be not lost with the child of
damnation.
Truly since my soul was incensed with holy love,
I am set in longing to see Thy Majesty. Therefore made the bearer of poverty I
despise earthly dignity and care for no honour; my joy truly is friendship.
When I began to love Thy love took my heart and suffered me to desire nothing
but love. And then Thou, God, madest my soul burn in sweet light, therefore in
Thee and by Thee I can die and feel no heaviness. Delectable heat is also in
the loving heart, that has devoured heavy grief in the fire of burning love.
And from hence is sweetness given, principally music going betwixt and
softening the soul, where Thou my God and my Comfort hast ordained Thy
temple.
That joy certain is full delicious after which I
yearn, and no man may be more covetous in such desire. Wherefore my loving soul
as it were arraying a spouse for the King of the high Empire, says thus: `Love
holds my heart with unloosened bands, and sets it in such governance and binds
it so greatly with a marvellous maistry that it is pleased to think rather to
die than to live.' This flower certain can not end for my friend is so burning
in love, he sings the melody and joy of death.
In the beginning truly of my conversion and
singular purpose I thought I would be like the little bird that languishes for
the love of his beloved, but is gladdened in his longing, when he that it loves
comes and sings with joy, and in its song also languishes, but in sweetness and
heat. It is said that the nightingale is given to song and melody all night,
that she may please him to whom she is joined. How mickle more should I sing
with greatest sweetness to Christ my Jesu, that is Spouse of my soul through
all this present life that is night in regard to the clearness to come, so that
I should languish in longing and die for love. But in dying I shall wax strong,
and in heat I shall be nourished; and I shall joy and in joying sing the
likings of love with mirth, and hot devotion as it were from a pipe shall issue
and my soul shall yield angels melody, kindled within, to the most high, and
offered by the mouth at the altar of God's praise. Thus my soul shall alway be
greedy to love and never fail with heaviness or sloth from the desire she
received.
Soothly holiness of mind, readiness of will, heat
of very desire and turning to God by continuance of thought, that are in holy
souls, suffer them not to sin mortally; and if they sin through frailty or
ignorance, anon they are raised up to true penance by those pricks, nor shall
they bide long in sin although they cleave to the liking. The venial sin
forsooth that they do, they waste in the fire of love--unless any be cast down
by such negligence that they ween that that in which they trespass by no
sin--and charity is not enough to put away all the pain merited; or else they
have no tribulation wherewith their sin may be purged. Certain in the coming of
love the lover's heart is burned. Hotter than fire is this marvellous heat, the
which most sweetly gladdens the mind and tempers and shadows from the heat of
sins.
Good Jesu, give me the organ-like and heavenly
song of angels that in that I may be ravished and Thy worship continually sing;
that Thou gavest to me unknowing and unwise, now to me expert and asking, give
again. Cherish me in my last end I may be found full of fire. Show me sweet
cherishing in Thy good will that my defaults may be here punished and cleansed
in that wise that, in Thy mercy, Thou hast known for him cleaving to Thee; not
as in Thy wrath Thou cherishest those flourishing in this world, to whom Thou
givest temporal prosperity and keepest endless pains. Worldly lovers soothly
may know the words, or the ditties of our song but not the music of our songs;
for they read the words, but they can not learn the notes and tone and
sweetness of the songs.
O good Jesu Thou has bound my heart in the
thought of Thy Name, and now I can not but sing it; therefore have mercy upon
me, making perfect that Thou hast ordained. Thy true and busy lover is ravished
into ghostly song of mind, that it is impossible any such sweetness be of the
fiend, or such heat from any creature, nor such song from man's wit: in which
if I abide I shall be safe.
It behoves truly we be not glad to do small sins
that will to perfectly eschew great sins. He truly that wilfully and knowingly
falls into the least, ofttimes shall unavised fall into greater. It longs truly
to love to desire to fall into great wretchedness rather than sin once. It is
nought needful to him, but scornful, to seek delight, riches, strength, or
fairness, that in the doom of the everlasting King shall be made a knight, with
perfect beauty of members and clearness of colour; where in the heavenly hall
there shall neither be too mickle nor too little, where he shall serve the
Emperor in the world of worlds.
Explicit liber de Incendio Amoris, Ricardi
Hampole heremite, translatus in Anglicum instancijs domine Margarete
Heslyngton, recluse, per fratrem Richardum Misyn, sacre theologie bachalaureum,
tunc Priorem Lyncolniensem, ordinis carmelitarum, Anno domini M. CCCCxxxv in
festo translacionis sancti Martini Episcopi, quod est iiij nonas Iulij, per
dictum fratrem Richardum Misyn scriptum & correctum.