[G]What time the day removes the orient vault,
The rustic peasant leaves his humble home,
And when the sun with fiercer tangent strikes,
Fatigued and parched, he sits him in the shade;
Then plods again with hard, laborious toil,
Until black night the hemisphere enshrouds.
And then he rests. But I must ever chafe
At morning, noon-day, evening, and at night.
These fiery rays
Which stream from those two arches of my sun,
Ne'er fade from the horizon of my soul.
So wills my fate;
But blazing every hour
From their meridian they burn the afflicted heart.
[G] Quando il sen d'oriente il giorno sgombra.
CIC. This tablet expresses with greater truth than perspicacity the
sense of the figure.
TANS.. It is not necessary for me to make any effort to point out to you
the appropriateness, as it only requires a little attentive
consideration. The rays of the sun are the ways in which the divine
beauty and goodness manifest themselves to us; and they are fiery
because they cannot be comprehended by the intellect without at the same
time kindling the affections. The two arches of the sun are the two
kinds of revelation, that scholastic theologians call early and late,
whence our illuminating intelligence, as an airy medium, deduces that
species, either in virtue, which it contemplates in itself, or in
efficacy, which it beholds in its effects. The horizon of the soul, in
this place, is that part of the superior potentialities where the
vigorous impulse of the affection comes to aid the lively comprehension
of the intellect, being signified by the heart, which, burning at all
hours, torments itself; because all those fruits of love that we can
gather in this state are not so sweet that they have not united with
them a certain affliction, which proceeds from the fear of imperfect
fruition: as especially occurs in the fruits of natural affection, the
condition of which I cannot do better than explain in the words of the
Epicurean poet:
Ex hominis vera facie, pulchroque colore
Nil datur in corpus præter simulacra fruendum
Tenuia, quæ vento spes captat sæpe misella.
Ut bibere in somnis sitiens cum quærit, et humor
Non datur, ardorem in membris qui stinguere possit,
Sed laticum simulacra petit, frustraque laborat,
In medioque sitit torrenti flumine potans:
Sic in amore Venus simulacris ludit amantis,
Nec satiare queunt spectando corpora coram,
Nec manibus quicquam teneris abradere membris
Possunt, errantes incerti corpore toto.
Denique cum membris conlatis flore fruuntur
Ætatis, dum jam præsagit gaudia corpus,
Atque in eo est Venus, ut muliebria conserat arva,
Adfigunt avide corpus, iunguntque salivas
Oris, et inspirant pressantes dentibus ora,
Necquiquam, quoniam nihil inde abradere possunt,
Nec penetrare, et abire in corpus corpore toto.
In the same way, he judges as to the kind of taste that we can have of
divine things, which, while we force ourselves to penetrate, and unite
with them, we find that we have more pain in the desire than pleasure
in the realization. And this may have been the reason why that wise
Hebrew said that he who increases knowledge increases pain; because
from, the greater comprehension grows the greater desire. And this is
followed by greater vexation and grief for the deprivation of the thing
desired. So the Epicurean, who led a most tranquil life, said
opportunely:
Sed fugitare decet simulacra, et pabula amoris
Abstergere sibi, atque alio convertere mentem,
Nec servare sibi curam certumque dolorem:
Ulcus enim virescit, et inveterascit alendo,
Inque dies gliscit furor, atque ærumna gravescit.
Nec Veneris fructu caret is, qui vitat amorem,
Sed potius, quæ sunt, sine poena, commoda sumit.