Chapter XX

When this song was a little gone abroad, a certain one of my friends, hearing the same, was pleased to question me, that I should tell him what thing love is; it may be, conceiving from the words thus heard a hope of me beyond my desert. Wherefore I, thinking that after such discourse it were well to say somewhat of the nature of Love, and also in accordance with my friend’s desire, proposed to myself to write certain words in the which I should treat of this argument. And the sonnet that I then made is this:—

Love and the gentle heart are one same thing, Even as the wise man¹ in his ditty saith: Each, of itself, would be such life in death As rational soul bereft of reasoning. ’Tis Nature makes them when she loves: a king Love is, whose palace where he sojourneth Is called the Heart; there draws he quiet breath At first, with brief or longer slumbering. Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind Will make the eyes desire, and through the heart Send the desiring of the eyes again; Where often it abides so long enshrin’d That Love at length out of his sleep will start. And women feel the same for worthy men.

This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first, I speak of him according to his power. In the second, I speak of him according as his power translates itself into act. The second part begins here, “Then beauty seen.” The first is divided into two. In the first, I say in what subject this power exists. In the second, I say how this subject and this power are produced together, and how the one regards the other, as form does matter. The second begins here, “’Tis Nature.” Afterwards when I say, “Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind,” I say how this power translates itself into act; and, first, how it so translates itself in a man, then how it so translates itself in a woman: here, “And women feel.”