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The Fourth Treatise - CHAPTER XXX
As it has been shown previously in the third chapter of this treatise,
this Song has three principal parts, whereof two have been reasoned or
argued out, the first of which begins in the aforesaid chapter, and
the second in the sixteenth (so that the first through thirteen, and
the second through fourteen chapters, passes on to an end, without
counting the Proem of the treatise on the Song, which is comprised in
two chapters), in this thirtieth and last chapter we must briefly
discuss the third principal part, which was made as a refrain and as a
species of ornament for this Song; and it begins: "My Song, Against
the strayers."
Here it is chiefly to be known that every good workman, at the end of
his work, ought to ennoble and embellish it as much as possible, that
it may leave his hands so much the more precious, and more worthy of
fame. And this I endeavour to do in this part, not as a good workman,
but as the follower of one.
I say, then, "My Song, Against the strayers." "Against the strayers"
is a phrase, as, for example, from the good friar, Thomas of Aquinas,
who, to a book of his, which he wrote to the confusion of all those
who go astray from our Faith, gave the title "Contra Gentili," Against
the Heathen. I say, then, that thou shalt go, which is as much as to
say: "Thou art now perfect, and it is now time, not to stand still,
but to go forward, for thy enterprise is great. And 'when you reach
Our Lady, hide not from her that your end Is labour that would lessen
wrong.'" Where it is to be observed that, as our Lord says, "We ought
not to cast pearls before swine," because it is not to their
advantage, and it is injury to the pearls; and, as Aesop the poet says
in the first fable, a little grain of corn is of far more worth to a
cock than a pearl, and therefore he leaves the pearl and picks up the
grain of corn: reflecting on this, as a caution, I speak and give
command to the Song that it reveal its high office where this Lady,
that is, where Philosophy, will be found. And that most noble Lady
will be found when her dwelling-place is found, that is, the Soul in
which she finds her Inn. And this Philosophy dwells not in wise men
alone, but likewise, as is proved above in another treatise, wherever
the love for her inhabits, she is there. "And to such as these," I say
to the Song, "thou mayst reveal thine office, because to them the
purpose thereof will be useful, and by them its thoughts will be
gathered in."
And I bid it say to this Lady, "I travel ever talking of your Friend."
Nobility is her Friend. For so much does the one love the other, that
Nobility always seeks her, and Philosophy does not turn aside her most
sweet glance to any other.
O, what a great and beautiful ornament is this which is given to her
in the last part of this Song, by giving to her the title of Friend,
the Friend of her whose own abode is in the most secret depths of the
Divine Mind. _
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