Annotations

Altars, Priests, and off'rings made: Llewellyn [10] builds a cogent interpretation for this line based on a quotation from Robert Boyle's Seraphick Love: Some Motives and Incentives to the Love of God (1663). Boyle writes:

    Offering up of hearts, Adoring, Sacrifices, Martyrdoms; does not all this imply, that though it be Said to her, 'tis meant to a Divinity: which is so much the True and genuine Object of mens Love, that we cannot exalt that Passion for any other, without investing it with the Notion and Attribute of God? [a href="citation.html">11]

Although this work post-dates the publication of the poem, Llewellyn applies this concept of divine elevation of earthly passions to explain how Philips justifies her religious metaphors for love.



FRIENDSHIP'S MYSTERYS:
TO MY DEAREST LUCASIA

Come, my Lucasia, since we see
    That miracles men's faith do move,
By wonder and by prodigy
    To the dull, angry world let's prove
    There's a religion in our Love.            5

For though we were design'd t'agree,
    That fate no liberty destroys,
But our election is as free
    As Angells, who with greedy choice
    Are yet determin'd to their Joys.         10

Our hearts are doubled by their loss,
    Here mixture is addition grown;
We both diffuse and both engross:
    And we, whose minds are so much one,
    Never, yet ever, are alone.

We court our own captivity,
    Then Thrones more great and innocent:
`Twere banishment to be set free,
    Since we weare fetters whose intent
    Not bondage is, but Ornament.           20

Divided Joys are tedious found,
    And griefs united easyer grow:
We are our selves but by rebound,
    And all our titles shuffled so,
    Both Princes, and both subjects too.

Our hearts are mutuall victims lay'd,
    While they (such power in friendship ly's)
Are Altars, Priests, and off'rings made,
And each heart which thus kindly dy's,
Grows deathless by the sacrifise.            30