O God! my Theotimus, how the soul ardently pressed with affection to praise her God, is touched with a dolour most delicious and a delight most dolorous, when after a thousand efforts of praise she comes so short. Alas! she would wish, this poor nightingale, to raise her accents ever higher, and perfect her melody, the better to sing the praises of her well-beloved. By how much more she praises, by so much more is she delighted in praising: and by how much greater her delight in praising is, by so much her pain is greater that she cannot yet more praise him; still, to find what content she can in this passion, she makes all sorts of efforts, and in the midst of them faints and fails, as it happened to the most glorious S. Francis, who amidst the pleasure he had in praising God and singing his canticles of love, shed a great abundance of tears, and often let fall through feeblessness, what he might be holding in his hands: being like a sacred nightingale all outspent, and often losing respiration through the effort of aspiration after the praises of him whom he could never praise sufficiently.

 But hear an agreeable similitude upon this subject, drawn from the name which this loving Saint gave his religious; for he called them Cicalas, by reason of the nightly praises they sang to God. Cicalas, Theotimus, as though they were nature's organs, have their breasts set with pipes; and to sing the better they live only on dew, which they take not by the mouth, for they have none, but suck it by a certain little tongue they have on the breast, by which they utter their cries with so much noise that they seem to be nothing but voice. Now this is the state of the sacred lover; for all the faculties of her soul are as so many pipes which she has in her breast, to repeat the canticles and praises of the well-beloved. Her devotion in the midst of all these is the tongue of her heart, according to S. Bernard, by which she receives the dew of the divine perfections, sucking and drawing them to her, as her food, by the most holy complacency which she takes in them; and by the same tongue of devotion she utters all her voices of prayer, praise, canticles, psalms, benedictions, according to the testimony of one of the most glorious spiritual cicalas that was ever heard, who sang thus: Bless the Lord, O my soul: and let all that is within me bless his holy name. [247] For is it not as though he had said, I am a mystical cicala, my soul, my spirit, my thoughts, all the faculties that are collected within me, are organ pipes. Let all these for ever bless the name and sound the praises of my God. I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise shall be always in my mouth. In the Lord shall my soul be praised; let the meek hear and rejoice. [248]
 

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