inamorata, ladylove, idol, darling, duck, Dulcinea, angel, goddess, cara sposa

Happy the father that calls thee daughter, bella sposa, and most honored the mother that bare so excellent a child!

In like manner the sposa desired all present to witness that she took the man for her wedded husband, with her own full acquiescence in, and approbation of, his determination.

With rather Stentorian voices they have been singing a dialogue which is most elaborately entitled a "Canzonetta Nuova, sopra un marinaro che da l' addio alla sua promessa sposa mentre egli deve partire per la via di Levante.

Two airs in it, 'Cara sposa' and 'Lascia ch'io pianga' (the latter still admired as one of the purest expressions of his genius), made a great impression.

The scheme of decoration in this gorgeous chapel is very remarkable, as testifying to the development which the theological idea of the Virgin, as the Sposa or personified Church, had attained at this period, and because it is not, as in other examples, either historical or devotional, but purely doctrinal.

The Virgin is exhibited, not merely as the Mother, the Sposa, the Church, but as HEAVENLY WISDOM, for in this character the Catholic Church has applied to her the magnificent passage in Proverbs: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old.

This expresses her dignity as the Sposa as well as the Mother.

In a picture by Garofalo, the Child, bending from his mother's knee, places a golden crown on the head of St. Catherine as Sposa; on each side stand St. Agnes and St. Jerome.

If the kneeling Sposa be St. Catherine of Siena, the nun, and not St. Catherine of Alexandria, or if the two are introduced, then we may be sure that the picture was painted for a nunnery of the Dominican order.

Don John de Ayala, went forth to look For birds, and shot a crane; Which, forthwith giving the aforesaid knave To cook, according to the Spanish taste; He, to his dainty-loving sposa gave A leg at once, well deeming, that to waste So fair an opportunity for sin Would be (as he should say a burning shame;) But, when the bird, at dinner-time went in, Cried Juan, "Where's the left leg of my game?