earthly savour is brent out of it, and all mean letting[168] between
the soul and the cleanness of angels is broken and put away from it.
Then soothly may he sing a new song, and soothly he may hear a
blessed heavenly sound, and angel's song without deceit or feigning.
Our Lord woteth there that soul is that, for abundance of brenning
love, is worthy to hear angel's song. Who so then will hear angel's
song, and not be deceived by feigning of himself, nor by
imagination, nor by the illusion of the enemy, him behoveth for to
have perfect charity; and that is when all vain love and dread, vain
joy and sorrow, is cast out of the heart, so that it love nothing
but God, nor dread nothing but God, nor joyeth, nor sorroweth
nothing but in God, or for God. Who so might by the grace of God go
this way, he should not err. Nevertheless, some men are deceived by
their own imagination, or by the illusion of the enemy in this
manner.[169] Some man, when he hath long travailed bodily and
ghostily in destroying of sins and getting of virtues, and
peradventure hath gotten by grace a somedeal[170] rest, and a
clarity in conscience, anon he leaveth prayers, readings of holy
scriptures, and meditations of the passion of Christ, and the mind
of his wretchedness; and, or[171] he be called of God, he gathereth
his own visits by violence to seek and to behold heavenly things, or
his eye be made ghostly by grace, and overtravaileth by imaginations
his wits, and by indiscreet travailing turneth the brains in his
head, and forbreaketh[172] the mights and the wits of the soul and
of the body. And then, for feebleness of the brain, him thinketh
that he heareth wonderful sounds and songs; and that is nothing else
but a fantasy, caused of troubling of the brain; as a man that is in
a frenzy him thinketh that he heareth and seeth that none other man
doth; and all is but vanity and fantasies of the head, or else it is
by working of the wicked enemy that feigneth such sounds in his