What would'st thou more, sweet foe?
What wish is that which moves thee still to hurt,
Since this my heart of but one wound is made?
So that there lies no part that now may be
By thee or others printed, stabbed, or pierced,
Turn thee aside, turn otherwhere thy bow,
For thou dost waste thy powers, oh beauteous god!
In slaying him who lies already dead.
The meaning of all this is metaphorical, like the rest, and may be
understood in the same sense as that. Here the number of darts which
have wounded and do wound the heart, signify the innumerable individuals
and species of things, in which shine the splendour of Divine Beauty,
according to their degrees, and whence the affection for the good, well
proposed and well apprehended warms us. The which through the causes of
potentiality and actuality, of possibility and of effect, crucify and
console, give the sense of sweetness and also make the bitter to be
felt. But where the entire affection is all turned towards God, that is
towards the Idea of Ideas, from the light of intelligible things, the
mind becomes exalted to the super-essential unity, and, all love, all
one, it feels itself no longer solicited by various objects, which
distract it, but is one sole wound, in the which the whole affection
concurs and which comes to be one and the same affection. Then there is
no love or desire of any particular thing, that can urge, nor even
present itself before the will; for there is nothing more straight than
the straight, nothing more beautiful than beauty, nothing better than
goodness, nothing can be found larger than size, nor anything lighter
than that light which with its presence darkens and obliterates all
lights.
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