htnings athwart me flash,
That all the worthless may
Pass like a cloud away,
While shineth from afar,
Love's gem, a deathless star!

These ejaculations completely exhaust the emotional life of the
self-destructive metaphysical erotic--he is conscious of nothing but his
passion of love which eclipses all else. With him the second form of
metaphysical love, the love-death, is reached. Goethe, in creating this
character, must have had in his mind the unique Jacopone da Todi. For
this rapturous love was the keynote of Jacopone's character, his whole
life was one great ecstasy:

My heart was all to broken,
As prostrate I was lying,
With dear love's fiery token
Swift from the archer flying;
Wounded, with sweet pain soaken,
Peace became war--and dying,
My soul with pain was soaken,
Distraught with throes of love.

In transports I am dying,
Oh! Love's astounding wonder!--
For love, his fell spear plying,
Has cleft my heart asunder.
Around the blade are lying
Sharp teeth, my life to sunder,
In rapture I am dying,
Distraught with throes of love.

And:

Oh, Love! oh, Love! oh, Jesus, my desire,
Oh, Love! I hold thee clasped in sweet embrace!
Oh, Love! embracing thee, could I expire!
Oh, Love! I'd die to see thee face to face.
Oh, Love! oh, Love! I burn in rapture's fire,
I die, enravished in the soul's embrace.

The legend has it that the heart of Jacopone broke with the intensity of
love. This would have been a love-death of cosmic grandeur.

Before Jacopone St. Bernard, in whom all the radiations of metaphysical
eroticism are traceable, was consumed by similar emotions. Some of his
Latin poems very much resemble the poems of his successor:

Oh, most sweet Jesu, Saviour blest,
My yearning spirit's hope and rest,
To thee mine inmost nature cries,
And seeks thy face with tears and sighs.

Thou, my heart's joy where'er I rove,
Thou art the perfecting of love;
Thou art my boast--all praise be thine,
Jesu, the world's salvation, mine!

Then his embrace, his holy kiss,
The honeycomb were naught to this!
'Twere bliss fast bound to Christ for aye,
But in these joys is little stay.

This love with ceaseless ardour burns,
How wondrous sweet no stranger learns;
But tasted once, the enraptured wight,
Is f