Ascent of mount carmel [clip 1]

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings -- oh, happy chance! --
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

IN this first stanzas the soul sings of the happy
fortune and chance which it experienced in going
forth from all things that are without, and from
the desires74 and imperfections that are in the
sensual75 part of man because of the disordered
state of his reason. For the understanding of this
it must be known that, for a soul to attain to
the state of perfection, it has ordinarily first
to pass through two principal kinds of night,
which spiritual persons call purgations or purifications
of the soul; and here we call them nights, for
in both of them the soul journeys, as it were,by night, in darkness.

By St. Johm of the cross