HORTULUS SACER

THE SACRED ENCLOSURE OF THE HERMETIC FLOWER

SACRED ENCLOSURE OF A VARIANT COLOR AND FRAGRANCE FLOWER


By which the soul gains access from earthly to heavenly things, from bodily to spiritual things.


(Excerpt from "Mystery of the Cross" and translated from Latin by André Savoret)


Melchior Douzetemps

1732



To the reader


If you read my verses with a cold heart, my verses will be cold to your heart. But if it is with a loving heart, you will burn with the same fire that sets my muse ablaze and consumes me with Love.


I. The Bird in the Cage

The Lord takes care of the bird in the cage in return, the bird appreciates and sings the gifts of the Lord.


II. The transmuting stone

Lead me to the Stone of the Sun, O virgin Sophia, since indeed you are wont to play with your disciples. Some seek the Stone in the manner of the sophists. For me, you are the Lunific and Solific Stone. Your celestial flesh is the Lunific Stone, and your blood, O Sophia, is the Solific Stone: the white and the red. You change death into life, pain into joy, darkness into light, all evil into good, and war into peace: you compensate labor with rest, affliction with joy, O admirable Peter with fire!


III. The reborn Christ

O Christ, I will celebrate your glory, your high deeds, your merits; and I will honor the beneficial effects of your virtue. Behold: The Dragon lies, inanimate! You triumph over death: your threatening enemies fall before your sceptre; the Lemures are forced to return to the tenebrous empire when a spark of your Light is made flesh. Born of an incorruptible seed, the Son of Love wants to dwell in a humble dwelling. Come into our arms, O best of Hosts! Revive me with your flames, loving Saviour! Liquify my heart, renew my soul and purify my spirit, so that you can say of me: here is the new man! - a new man passing, by your virtue, from death to life; a new man, by the Gift from Above! - O Love, may your sacred fires repel the forbidden fires! Let our spark burn with pure fire! Take me away: Let me be your own property, and that by paternal right! See ! I act freely by abandoning myself to your jurisdiction. Simplify me, purify me, sanctify me, for candor, uprightness and simplicity please you. May no lover ever separate me from your love. May holy faith and Love strengthen our bonds.
Let me be yours, be mine! To you I give myself, dedicate myself and submit myself; give yourself equally to me: let me be yours, let you be mine


IV. lone dove

Isn't it sad to hear the pitiful complaints of the Dove: Without you, chaste, she groans! Without you, overwhelmed with pain, she perishes!


V. Amazing Love of God in Christ

Christ is the gentle heart of the Father, absolute compassion; it is the pure abyss of the divine heart, Love. He is unalterable peace, living water, salvation, clemency, virtue, Grace; the guide and companion leading to the Eternal Father. Made man, he descended to the bottom of the human entrails in order to join the superior things to the inferior ones, the high things to the deep ones. Invincible, Love conquers; free is bound; the victor is vanquished: life dies in him.
O cruel Love, too relentless against Yourself! Refrain from shedding innocent blood! Punish the culprit. To completely wash away the thousands of voluntary faults in the world, a single droplet of your blood is enough: spare yourself. But he does not spare himself: now blood is flowing, flowing on all sides, until the entire cohort is cleansed of all crime. O sublime work in height, width, length and depth! The amazed spirit is overwhelmed by your prodigy: You are the full Light! superabundant salvation! perpetual life! In your merciful heart, plunge my oppressed heart. O Lamb of God, always in agony, like a perpetual victim - Sacred victim offering himself unceasingly to the irritated Father! - Make, by your death, that my life is forever a victim sacrificed with you to the Eternal Father! Fountain, be open to altered souls! we will be satisfied: in you, salvation of the human race, all glory is manifested!


VI. Nothing is ours

What ! do you own all things? They are mine, you say, both this and that. O Man! If all things are yours, then what is God's?


VII. Sacred Kiss of Love: ECHO

What unheard voice strikes the air and our ears? A reality. And in our chest, what is this disorder: Love. Love, great friend and executioner, with insensitive beginnings.
The Lamb. Sweet melody! Your mouth. With passion ? Patience ! Abbreviate! Is it a prayer? I pray to you with all my heart. O Heart. Won't you make happy the heart that is dedicated to you? Are you leaving me? My worry consumes me. You are burning. No, but I'm burned. By your half-words. Bis. You are joking unfairly, Love:
You are not answering well. You promise. I pledge my faith. Likewise. Holy faith! Finally you have pity. You will be.
Then, I will be satisfied if you give me a pledge of Love.
From the mouth. Leaning towards you, I am hanging on your mouth. O burden.
Sweet yoke! Light burden! I am silent, desiring nothing more: I am hanging on your lips: let us exchange a thousand kisses.


VIII. Nothing perishes

Oh stupor! from a calcined tree trunk comes Salt: Purified salt, spiritual water. Let the waters undergo the coction of fire, a salt will be reborn from it which will be of great medical help to the sick. An indestructible energy resides in the salts: Art demonstrates that the mysteries of salt have something divine. The end of all things seems to be ashes. But it is said that the end of the ash is a glass. Art does this: why not the Creator of Nature and Art? If a base earth gave us glass, what will the stars give us?


IX. Love restores everything

To him who is most powerful in virtue owes greater glory. Would it be to Christ or to the Serpent? Solved: the consequence is clear. If the Serpent could give death to all things, did not the blood of Christ have the power to quicken all things? Stronger than Hell, stronger than anger is Love; the eternal source stronger than fire. Light repels darkness, and life death. Finally, Love will quicken all that he has mortified.


X. On the same subject: the Lion and the Lamb

You who forgive enemies and teach them to forgive, excusing their ignorance and praying for their salvation; and who commands to bless who curses: Will your wrath always rage on the lost flock? Certainly, like a Lion, you will pass through fire and water these hardened ones, until, lenited, purified, from oxen they become sheep, from tigers, Lambs, so that you feed your docile sheep with the gentleness of the Lamb.


XI. Hunter Love

Unrepentant fowler, erecting signs and traps, you know how to embrace souls by admirable means. Difficulty stimulates you; the horror of prison does not frighten you: Irons do not hinder the work of Love. Open your quiver, grab an arrow, draw your bow. if you miss a target, strike my heart.
Universal kidnapper: none of the little foxes that ravaged our vines survived. O make me happy, make me enjoy heavenly bliss! Why can't I become the prey tightly squeezed in your nets! In love with you, I make myself a captive of The Love: As you are the hunter for me, so that I am the game for you!


XII. Changer Love

I know nothing, I can do nothing, I am nothing but the shadow of a name: You, you know, you can, and are everything together. My heart is small and perverse, Yours is great and holy; bad is my will, but yours is good. If the lack of profits does not deter You from making the exchange: Take my will, give me Yours; what I deliver to You is Yours, You, by giving me what overflows from You, you lose nothing, while for me it is an immense gain. When I give myself entirely to You, You receive nothing; on the other hand, when You give Yourself to me, You are and I are the sovereign Good. If we make this mutual exchange, my heart with Your love, Your heart with my love will be ablaze: the benefit that You will procure for me will be the glory of a happy life,


XIII. Philomela. Love

The other birds chirp their tune. You alone, O Philomel, compose a sweet melody.
The other passions reject the duties incumbent on us: The Love which lasts until the end of the centuries conquers them all.


XIV. Winged Love. Vessel

How one is carried away by a rapid current, and the other by a quick flight, what apropos in the encounter navis, avis (ship, bird)! The spirit burns with desires so vivid that the wing of Love lifts it to Heaven.


XV. By fire, by light

No other way leads to the Light Pursue your way through the fire, wherever the Beloved leads you: with this guide you will be safe. For the father of Light is fire: but whatever thou shalt put off in fire, hold it for invaluable gain.


XIV. Soul union with Sophia

The Bride governs the celestial waters; the Bridegroom exhales internal fire, as much as a legitimate Love burns. The conjunction of fire and water creates light through this seed. Hence, one is said to be the male of the virgin, the other, the virgin of the male.


XVII. In Good and Bad Reputation. 2 Cor. vs. 6, v. 8.

What use is good reputation to you, if JESUS ​​is not your guest? And if he is your host, how will bad fame harm you? Let the proud accuse me, condemn me, reject me, trample me; that they affect my remarks there with airs of superiority, I am not moved by it: for me, Christ will always be, JESUS ​​will always be fame, honor, praise, glory, reputation.


XVIII. Eternity Conceived But Not Understood

Here, number, speculation, measure, determining reason fail at the same time: you yourself fail. Evaluate and calculate: observe, imagine, start again, vertigo will annihilate you; the universe will crush you. The Aeon of the Greeks, the Olam of the Hebrews vanish!
The mind makes vain efforts to lift such a heavy burden; If he persists all the same, if he struggles, he loses his way, it is not eternal: certainly he must stop. Someone still seeks, hopes, asks, wishes anxiously; it is not eternal: and it always misses the goal.
For you, O Boëce, it is the possession of eternal life, at once full, entire and perfect: I approve of this judgment. The eternal Spirit of Harmony, which unties the eternal Abyss, is the only one to possess the keys. With a pacified spirit, freed from all transience, he reveals himself in the depths to the clarity of Love. Immense and endless tranquility; a single Good always containing them all: a single indivisible and constant Good. It is true freedom, true peace, the only bliss of life, without any pain or struggle to sustain. It is said, O Lamb, that the virtue of your shed blood pacifies all, reconciles all. Who tastes it with you past trials, enjoys an inexpressible peace: In truth, what he experiences, he understands!


XIX. From us to God

Chase away the darkness, if you want to be filled with Light; do you not want to be deprived of God? Strip yourself of the love of the World. Despair of you, of the World, and of all created things: Thus, your hope will remain well fixed in God alone.


XX. Consciousness speaks

As no one can flee from themselves, nor from me; I bear witness to everyone that I am the tribunal, throne of eternal Power. Whistleblower, I list the faults; witness, I blame them, both judge and executioner. The avenger sometimes pursues with an agile foot the culprits who flee him, but I goad your entrails and I count the fibers one by one. If you sin against me, I'll be your drag. Crime receives its punishment everywhere. Am I a whistleblower: be ashamed! Am I a witness: fear! Am I a judge: I am suing you! Beneath my blows: it is pain Consult me, remain in my obedience, for I am the pan of the scale testifying to the examination of the eternal judge.


XXI. incomprehensible god

If someone goes towards the inaccessible Light without the torch that emits the Light, he is walking blindly. The infinite Light will overwhelm the blind. Without the torch of faith, so many different ideas you form, so many illusions you have about Deity; so many concepts that are unique to you, so many fallacious mental representations; just as many gods you imagine, just as many idols you worship. It belongs to the Majesty alone to know itself. To faith belongs to believe. Believe: you see!


XXII. Laconically

Fear knowingly sinning; and pray to the sacred Pneuma which gives impetus to your bosom: Renounce everything and even yourself: That is all. The Spirit manifesting to your breathless mind will do the rest and teach your heart the mystical senses.


XXIII. The Letter kills; the Spirit quickens

The letter of the written Word is a sheath and a shell; under one hides a sword and under the other a pit. Open your heart, break the nut: thus, the letter of the Word being dead, the Pneuma will be your life and that of your heart.


XXIV. Where is the true Religion?

Mother of fraternal love, she inspires us with aversion for ourselves. She has faith as a companion and piety as a sister. Peace-loving, she struggles against no one; she cherishes all men. It detaches us from the World and connects us to God. To the poor, to widows, to the dispossessed and to prisoners, she tirelessly extends helping hands. What the hands cannot provide, the heart and the mouth give. Consoling the wretched and compassionate towards the guilty, she does everything for everyone; she willingly supports reproaches and crosses, suffers and dies with JESUS. Tell me where she shows herself such? And I will tell you in return: Salvation is there, with true religion!


XXV. Subtle idolatry

He who puts his trust in himself or in created things seeks himself, honors and loves himself, above God; he rejoices in divine gifts and benefits but neither attributes them nor relates them to God the giver. He makes himself mental idols of his heart and created things, and worships them.


XXVI. Final Fulfillment of All Things in JESUS ​​(From German)

The bowels of the earth swallowed up Moses, (1) the Lawgiver. A chariot of fire carried away (2) the zealous Elijah. The Messiah, neither the earth covers him, nor the fire took him away, but a cloud (3) carried him away, and a cloud, likewise, will return him when the old Law and the fire cease, while Moses and Elijah will be covered with a garment as white as snow, as of old on Tabor. (4) Then, life will flow soft and peaceful, like clear water. Enoch (5) and the paradisiac times will return, - this Enoch who, a long time in advance, prefigured JESUS, the promised Messiah, - and the image of the Savior will shine in all. (1) Deut. vs. 34, v. 6
(2) 4 Reg. vs. 2, v. 11
(3) Act. C. I, V. 9 –11
(4) Luke, c. 9, c. 30, 31
(5) Gen. vs. 5, v. 24.


XXVII. The Lily instructing Mortals

O mortal man (1), you who pass like a flower and who, like it, wither to return to dust; look at me, rising from the ground to go straight up in the air. Examine my trigonal stigma and my saffron anthers. Consider the shape, texture and arrangement of my leaves: how great is the medicinal virtue that is hidden within me! No art can imitate my coloring; no perfume can match the fragrance of mine. Next to mine (2) the glory of Solomon is eclipsed. My dazzling whiteness is the ornament of chaste virginity. Now, I live and I die, but from death I am reborn again: spring gives me life, but the bitter winter kills me. You, Mortal, scrutinize this living similarity: Learn from me to live chastely, and learn to die. My life is short, yours is short: despise obsolete things, and with me lift up your head from the earth to the heavens. Contemplate me and have pity on you, we are disappearing together!
If I perish, perish with me if I'm reborn, reborn with me. When I die, die to yourself and to creatures; when, coming out of death, I rise, rise at the same time. Be a pleasant perfume to Christ, through your life and your morals, as, spontaneously, my perfume rises to your nostrils. I grow and green again for you: leafy, flowering, fragrant. In a new life, grow and green again. Finally, since as many times I die, as many times I resurrect, say where does life hide between its flight and its return?
(1) Job, c. 14, c. 2
(2) Matt. vs. 6, v. 29.


XXVIII. The clemency

The all-providing Cause has given the brutes claws and teeth and grins and horns to repel strength with strength. To the naked and weak man she gave the love of his parents and of the fatherland so that each man fulfills his duties towards others.
Clemency subjugates more surely and more easily those who are led by a heart without gall than by a hard grip.
As warlike virtues bring great renown to princes, so love wins over hostile souls. The right of pardon is the privilege of power. Sovereign power comes from the One: let it be feared without having to be feared.


XXIX. Justice speaking for itself

Vine and vice proliferate beyond measure as soon as no hand prunes them. What is my role? I experience them both. Like lightning, those I strike are few, but those I frighten are legion. Many are corrected by my warnings, many more by my threats. Through me, no one perishes except those whom one must pity for having lived. Though through me many suffer and perish, O sorrow!


XXX. Faustina and her filial piety

It had been ordered that the old man, condemned to the last torture, would perish a slow death, bound hand and foot. For a long time, Faustine feeds her father on the sly, from her daughter's breasts, now a mother. With the guards' attention aroused, Faustina's ruse began to be suspected as well as her intense love. Also, when one of the guards, more shrewd, saw the father drying up the breast of his child, he exclaimed, transported with anger: “O fine fly! I realize what a woman can do, and what pious frauds she is susceptible to”.


XXXI. Stoicism

Be a Lamb, behave like a Lamb. Gnawed to the marrow of the bones, the Lamb is silent: You, purse your lips when you suffer.


XXXII. You who sleep, get up!

Immortal man! What, you fall asleep in an idle life, you who were born for eternal life! Where does such deep torpor come from? Get up ; open your eyes ; banish the sleep that overwhelms you: The violent ravish the Kingdom of Heaven.


XXXIII. fiat

What power, in this passive verb, which extends to everything! God Himself, in creating, and Mary, teach us: The First Fiat, from nothingness, creates everything*; the second Fiat** brings down God from his own sphere. Since the active Word creates all things for you, learn to submit in silence, as the passive Fiat implies.
*Gen. C. I, V. 3**Luc, C. I, v. 38.


XXXIV. The Open Side of Christ

Where flows from the wound of fallen Adam, the corrupted blood, There even flows with this blood the living water of salvation.


XXXV. The Kingdom now blended will be purified

Currently, the lilies are blooming among the thorns. The robber kite among the birds, and the wolf among the sheep. The Fire will consume the thorns, the Kite and the Wolf: Lilies, birds and sheep will rejoice together.


XXXVI. O Proud! What are you proud of?

You who come forward with your face threatening and full of aggressiveness, eyeing everything with a sly arrogance, fetus, you are conceived, and, as a child, you are born between excrement and urine. O man, where does your pride come from?


XXXVII. Receptive Humility

As the waters flow abundantly from the hills into the valley, so God fills the humble detached from the world with love.


XXXVIII. Nothingness

Do you want to become something? Remember before that you are nothing: The matter from which the Great All is created is nothingness.


XXXIX. The Silkworm Symbol of hermit life and resurrection

In the shelter of its cocoon, the Bombyx weaves its silky threads of which man prides himself without any right. Ah! that far from the crowds, shut up in myself, I usefully weave the threads of my life! God, who clothes the worm with wings, can also transmute the worm that I am after my death.


XL. The Slave, the Freedman

When I voluntarily subject myself to sin, I become its slave; the sad outbursts of passion keep me chained.
When, a slave of Christ, I serve Christ: Love sets me free.


XLI. Feminine Praises and Tricks

If you are wise, you must fan fraud, artifice and flattery: The woman is fertile in tricks and burns to hear herself complimented.


XLII. Deadly Pleasure (From German)

Where you find only a burden, there God is not lost. Where you currently find pleasure, there Death is born!


XLIII. EVA, AVE

EVA and AVE, by the inversion of their names, reveal to us how immense is the Evil caused by one woman, and how immense the Good caused by another. EVA, our mother, is the cause of Death, and AVE, that of Salvation. EVA lost the men that AVE restored.


XLIV. Spider Web Weavers

When the spider struggles to weave a fragile web, oh how many imitators it has: you couldn't count them! Learned, ignorant, great and small, capable, incapable, and those whom my Muse forbids me to name, accompanied by futile words and frivolous arguments, and driven by the vanity of the absolute certainty they imagine they possess. Those whom Criticism entertains, those whom the letter of the Word tortures Those whom the Codex absorbs, like also the Podex and those who pretend to the Stone of the Sages, wanting with a rapacious energy to submit the divine laws to their own law. And those tormented by the Squaring of the Circle, those tormented by Perpetual Motion; those also who are proud of their honorary titles and their vain riches,
On both sides, however, one spins with as much effort: That one, in order to catch the flies, these in order to capture the men. Did the spider hope to have such colleagues with the same instincts? But, lest, perhaps, proud of such a great fortune, she will die, lest also that the hornets, maddened by my truthful words, will shoot their bloody darts at me as a reward for a thin canvas, here I am silent and cease to depict her Similars: for I miss the thread that a light breeze has carried away.


XLV. Idea concept

The Idea conceives the vision of the mind and the image formed in thought, giving birth to and vivifying its lineage. Hence one is said to have been formed and the other to have given form. Because of this, she herself is her own daughter and her own mother. Both are a chaste, charming, tender and luminous young virgin, and a limpid image of the thing conceived. Who seizes the mother of this one and the birth of Magic? May the Idea not disturb the mirror of his thought. The unique Idea manifests as a clear Image, for it reflects itself, and makes Echo a Goddess.


XLVI. Eternity is a Point

Although you add centuries during a long life, what you can count is not eternal. But what is sufficient unto itself, the indivisible, omnipresent Point, that is eternal, because you cannot count it.


XLVII. Never an End, yet an End

The things to which time gives birth cease with time: sorrows, afflictions, grief, mourning, pain, anger, passions, for the Abyss swallows them up, together with their causes and ends, devouring these monstrous products of degenerate Nature. But what has taken its course from the eternal beginning, never ceases: life will not cease, love will last forever.


XLVIII. The White and Vermeil Bridegroom (Cant. des Cant. C. V, V. 10)

As soon as you are handed over to me, you, the Spouse of Light and Fire, candor and ardor will be perfectly conjoined.


XLIX. Hanging Absalon (2 Kings, C. 18, v. 9 -14)

The avenger squeezes him close and the tree becomes a gibbet, the hair a trap, and Joab himself an executioner.


L. Author's Triple Cross

The first Cross was inflicted on me in the past by a blind clergy, hiding under the habit of two brothers of Christian Doctrine. Another came to me, invented by a proud Sophist whom it pleased to empty my coffers. The third was imagined by an odious Iscariot; I do not yet know the cause: perhaps I would know. These are outer crosses. But the one that God has added internally surpasses by far the others, Cross (blessed - heavy,) of Crosses.


LI. 63, Great Climacteric Year

This year, as we predict, announces a thousand perils: Many evils and nothing good. He who remembers and predicts these things has reached this term, at which age his independence, reputation and honor have sunk. However, this year promises him many gifts and also will restore his independence, his reputation and his honor and, at the same time, will impose silence on the calumnies of the vulgar: and the other liars will repent and blush for their actions. Hope suggests to me still a happier omen, which Sophia (Wisdom) with her own mouth forbids me to express.


LII. Corruption of one is Generation of the other

What the harsh winter destroys, the mild spring restores. Things here below are subject to successive changes: Death succeeds life, light to darkness, to work, restorative rest; to war, peace and to the old, the new. When the old Adam perishes, a new one is reborn; when Nature succumbs, Grace returns spontaneously: Do you want to produce a new nature? Destroy the old by corruption, for if this is not destroyed, new life will never develop.


LIII. Medicine is threefold, and not the Vulgar

The Verdigris of the Sages gives the first; the amiable Venus gives the second; the third comes from the Sky and the Sea. The first has its fires within it; yet the work requires a second and different fire to succeed. The second attracts the virtues of Heaven like a magnet; the coction alone suffices for the rest. And the third unites the forces of Heaven and Earth by impregnating the sea salt with the dew of Heaven.


LIV. The Spirit renews all things

He who remains buried in the old Adam crucifies himself, becomes disgusted with himself and will become rigid and frozen; the Sacred Pneuma alone, truly, renews all things: the more you join it, the more you are renewed. Do you want to become Phoenix? Abandon your old life: the flesh being defeated, the soul, in return, lives a new life.


LV. The One Needed

Martha, distracted by various cares, can hardly know the Unique: But her sister, seeking only the Unique, found all things in Him alone.


LVI. Most Useful Knowledge

He who will know himself will know many secret things: Man is the epitome of the World. But if this Microcosm contains within itself an abyss of Darkness and Light: Who can penetrate it? Deepen it? Reason, which depends only on the Stars, is incapable of this. The spirit can reach the Eternal Light. But our mind will never grasp it by acting but by suffering it: consequently, knowing how to suffer is the whole art!


LVII. know everything, know nothing

Divine Power created all things from the abyss of nothing. If you want to know everything, learn to know: nothing!


LVIII. Fateful Covetousness

When the body dies, the spirit lives, and all things also live, which it longs for. Do you want your spirit to reign supreme in a peaceful Court? Be, from now on, the master of your passions.


LIX. 666 - 999 (Rev. C. 13, V. 18)

It is the number of the man who possesses the horrible Legion of Demons: But, from this number, the Beast takes his name. This terrible, ferocious monster seizes man and he, rebels against his Creator, raises his crests against the Sky: 666! Do you want to become free? Lowers ridges; points facing down, you will be the winner inflicting the punishment: 999! The lively faith, the humble patience, proper to the Saints* tame this monster as well as all his Legions. * Apocal, C, 13, V. 10.


LX. Misfortune ! three times Woe! to those who dwell on the Earth (Rev. c. 8, v. 13)

Woe to the filthy world! The measure is complete: a lake of sulfur and burning pitch is prepared for all criminals. The court sits at the gates! Hecla, with its bellowing, Vesuvius in flames, Etna ablaze, make a deafening noise. Under the soil of Lazio - inexorable fate - sulfur and saltpetre accumulate. Fear, O Rome! Already the cruel army of wild beasts is stealing from the quarry, chastising and massacring the culprits whom nothing moves. And the ocean which encloses English and Batavians, threatens the World with its avenging waters, if it does not repent. Woe to the filthy world! Woe for the first time! Woe a second time! If the third happens Woe to you, World! you are lost


LXI. nothing hidden

All things are clear in the eyes of the supreme Power: Be its steward in Darkness, and it will be your Giver in Light.


LXII. The Miser

Gold and silver coins are bushes full of thorns. The execrable thirst for gold tortures the miser: he is never satisfied with riches. He sells justice, his corrupt soul, everything. Why shouldn't he sell Christ, his God? While the miser seeks, by sordid means, the goods which he does not have, he loses at the same time the true goods which he possesses.


LXIII. true freedom

When my spirit conscious of right, of just reason, shows me the One who has done me no harm, accused by the sole betrayal of Judas: Attentive to what is happening within me, external things are nothing to me; during these moments of my life, I am free, happy. My oppressed body is confined to its narrow domain; my sanctified spirit soars in the magnificent skies. Earthly prisons do not keep him chained: no affection, no pillory can stop him. All that is visible to you is a prison for him; only heavenly things occupy his mind and divine things make him happy. The earth-hating spirit experiences the delightful insinuation of that light and life which is beyond perishable. Then is revealed the chaste love to which the spirit joins as the submerged droplet joins the immense ocean. Outside this center there is no rest; in this unique center, freedom, tranquillity, peace and all good things abound; the spirit is really free only in this immutable center. All others are too hard, all others are too narrow. Turn where you want, up, down, in all directions: all the others are too hard and too narrow. Here is liberty surpassing all royalty in its excellence. If you doubt, imprisoned, I keep my word! All others are too hard, all others are too narrow. Turn where you want, up, down, in all directions: all the others are too hard and too narrow. Here is liberty surpassing all royalty in its excellence. If you doubt, imprisoned, I keep my word! All others are too hard, all others are too narrow. Turn where you want, up, down, in all directions: all the others are too hard and too narrow. Here is liberty surpassing all royalty in its excellence. If you doubt, imprisoned, I keep my word!