Wherein are expounded the remaining lines of the
aforementioned stanza.
. . . oh, happy chance! --
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at
rest.
THESE lines take as a metaphor the miserable estate of
captivity, a man's deliverance from which, when none of the
gaolers' hinder his release, he considers a 'happy chance.' For
the soul, on account of[205] original sin, is truly as it were a
captive in this mortal body, subject to the passions and desires
of nature, from bondage and subjection to which it considers its
having gone forth without being observed as a 'happy chance' --
having gone forth, that is, without being impeded or engulfed[206]
by any of them.
2. For to this end the soul profited by going forth upon a
'dark night' -- that is, in the privation of all pleasures and
mortification of all desires, after the manner whereof we have
spoken. And by its 'house being now at rest' is meant the sensual
part, which is the house of all the desires, and is now at rest
because they have all been overcome and lulled to sleep. For until
the desires are lulled to sleep through the mortification of the
sensual nature, and until at last the sensual nature itself is at
rest from them, so that they make not war upon the spirit, the
soul goes not forth to true liberty and to the fruition of union
with its Beloved.
END OF THE FIRST BOOK
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