Ah, the sweet wonder of my Lady’s smile, which is never seen but in the eyes!

And I say of these delights seen in her eyes and smile:  “Love brought them there as to his dwelling place;” where it is possible to consider Love in a twofold form.  First, the Love of the Soul, peculiar or proper to these places; secondly, universal Love, which inclines things to love and to be loved, which ordains the Soul to rule these parts.

Then, when I say, “They dazzle Reason,” I excuse myself for this, that it appears of such exceeding beauty that I can tell but little, owing to its overpowering force; and I say that I can say but little concerning it for two reasons.  The one is, that those things which appear in her aspect overpower our intellect; and I tell how this conquest is made:  that “They dazzle Reason, as sunbeams our eyes,” when the Sun overpowers our feeble sight, if not also the healthy and the strong.  The other is, that the man cannot look fixedly at it, because the Soul becomes inebriate therein; so that incontinently, after gazing thereat, it fails in all its operations.

Then, when I say, “Rain from her beauty little flames of fire,” I recur to discourse of its effect, since to discourse entirely of it is not possible.  Wherefore it is to be known that all those things which subdue our intellect, so that it is unable to see what they are, are most suitably to be discussed in their effects; wherefore of God, and of His separate substances, and of the first matter we can thus have some knowledge.  And therefore I say that the beauty of that Lady rains little flames of fire, meaning the ardour of Love and of Charity, “Made living with a spirit,” that is, Love informed by a gentle spirit, which is direct desire, through which and from which “to create Good thoughts;” and it not only does this, but it crushes and destroys its opposite, the innate vices which are especially the foes of all good thoughts.

And here it is to be known that there are certain vices in the Man to which he is naturally disposed; as certain men of a choleric complexion are disposed to anger:  and such vices as these are innate, that is, natural.  Others are the vices of habit, for which not the complexion, but habit, or custom, is to blame; such as intemperance, and especially intemperance in wine.  But these vices are subdued and put to flight by good habits, and the man is made virtuous thereby without finding fatigue in his moderation, as the Philosopher says in the second book of the Ethics.  Truly there is this difference between the natural passions and the habitual, that through use of good morals the habitual entirely vanish, because their origin, the evil habit, is destroyed by its opposite; but the natural, the source of which is in the complexion of the passionate man, although they may be made much lighter by good morals, yet they do not entirely disappear as far as regards the first cause, but they almost wholly disappear in act, because