Therefore by holy love no lover can lose but needs win mickle if he keep it truly in his heart. Love without pain bides in the soul of a lover, as lovers have shown, for love makes perfect and pain destroys. Making perfect and destroying are contrary, therefore the heart, loving perfectly, feels no pain nor heaviness, nor is it sorry nor disturbed. Thus soothly perfect love and wretched heaviness stand not together. Moreover, that that is done gladly is not done painfully.
Love therefore is the sweetest and most profitable thing that ever reasonable creature received.
In this love our life should stand and wax mighty and strong. A better dwelling place nor sweeter found I never, for it has made me and my love one, and made one out of two. And so doubtless it shall be bitter to fond lovers. Their pride and play in false beauty shall be cast into filth, that shall be with them endlessly when they are downcast into torments. Therefore let us love burningly, for if we love we shall sing in heavenly mirth to Christ with melody, whose love overcomes all things.