The Transformative Power of Love

Love:
Divine mechanism to
Preserve the beauty of our organism,
Either by accident or election.
From knowledge of you
Are born strange effects:
For darkness defects
And the dumb speak,
Crude intellects are strengthened
That once were weak.

Only two months ago
I was like the beasts of the wild,
The rational soul having been from me exiled.
As an animal only sense I knew,
Like a plant I was merely nourished and grew.
Eclipsed in me was reason, divine and holy,
Until in your rays this rising sun
Was shown me.

You untied and broke
The fool's dimness.
You were the divine genius
That instructed and gave me the light:
This new identity in which I dwell.
Hearty thanks, Love, I give you
For having taught me so well
That all men upon me seeing
Remark how different is my being.

Of desire's force
From an imagining so kind,
I see myself in the palaces
Of Reason Divine.

-Finea's Soliloquy, Act III, Scene I;
Lope de Vega's La Dama Boba (The Foolish Lady)
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