Basil of Caesarea, on Song 2:5

“Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples: because I languish with love.”

“What reflection is sweeter than the thought of the magnificence of God? What desire of the soul is so poignant and so intolerably keen as that desire implanted by God in a soul purified from all vice and affirming with sincerity, "I languish with love." Totally ineffable and indescribable are the lightning flashes of divine Beauty.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.