[T]he revelation flutters / My ventricles, my sternum and stomach. / The least glimpse, and my lost voice stutters, / Refuses to come back // Because my tongue is shattered. Gauzy / Flame runs radiating under / My skin; all that I see is hazy, / My ears all thunder. // Sweat comes quickly, and a shiver / Vibrates my frame. I am more sallow / Than grass and suffer such fever / As death should follow.
Sappho (tr. Aaron Poochigian)
So it seems that [the soul's] veins are opened and its blood is boiling out, its marrow is withered and its legs are weak, its chest burns and its throat is dry, so that its face and all its members perceive the inner heat and experience the tumult that love is making. At this time she also feels an arrow piercing through her heart all the way to the throat and beyond, even to the brain, as if she would lose her mind. And the soul thus feels love acting riotously within it, sparing nothing, uncontrollably seizing and consuming everything within the soul like a devouring fire which draws to itself and consumes everything it can get hold of.
Beatrice of Nazareth: Seven Manieren van Heiliger Minnen (tr. Roger DeGanck)
