Glory to that eternal peace is paid,
Who such divinity to thee imparts,
As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts.
His hope is treacherous only whose love dies
With beauty, which is varying every hour;
But in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power
Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower,
That breathes on earth the air of paradise.[13]

It is very remarkable how strongly the conviction of permanence, and the
preference for the inward conception over external beauty are expressed
in this fine sonnet; and also that the reason given for accepting the
discipline of love is that experience shows how it "hallows and makes
pure all gentle hearts." In such a love poem--the object of which might
very well have been Jesus--I seem to find more of the spirit of his
religion, whereby he binds his disciples to the Father that ruled within
him, till they too feel the bond of parentage as deeply as himself and
become sons with him of his Father;--more of that binding power of Jesus
is for me expressed in this fine sonnet than in Luther's Catechism. The
religion that enables a great artist to write of love in this strain, is
the religion of docility, of the meek and lowly heart. For Michael
Angelo was not a man by nature of a meek and lowly heart, any more than
Colet was a man naturally saintly or than Luther was a man naturally
refined. But because Michael Angelo thus prefers the kingdom of heaven
to external beauty, one must not suppose that he, its arch high-priest,
despised it. Nobody had a more profound respect for the thing of beauty,
whether it was the creation of God or man. He said:

"Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavour to
create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives for