Jacopone da Todi

O love, all love above,
Why hast thou struck me so?
All my heart, broke atwo,
Consumed in flames of love,
Burning and flaming cannot find solace;
It cannot fly from torment, being bound;
Like wax among live coal it melts apace;
It languishes alive, no help being found;
Seeking a grace to fly a little space,
A glowing furnace is its narrow pound.
In such a deadly swound,
Alas, where am I brought?
Living with death so fraught!
O leaping flames of love!

Before I ventured forth I dared demand
The love of Christ, expecting only sweet;
Thinking in peace of sweetness I could stand
Without a pain; but, being come to it,
I suffer torments of a molten brand;
And all my heart is melted by its heat.
I find no figure meet
To tell this curious smart,
To live without a heart,
Daily to die of love.

Ah! I have lost my heart and all my sense,
Desire and all delight and all sensation;
All beauty seemeth filth to me; and hence
Pleasaunce and power of riches and damnation.
A laden tree of love for recompense,
Set in my heart, doth yield me consolation;
Maketh great alteration;
Doth brook no least delay;
Thrusts out and drives away
Sense, strength and my self-love.

To purchase this one thing I ventured all
The world; in this exchange gave all I had.
If I had all things ever made, to call
My own, I give them freely and were glad.
But love deceived me somewhat; I gave all,
And now I know not whither I am led.
And people think me mad.
Now that I have been bought;
They set my worth at naught;
I am undone by love.

My friends imagined they could call me back;
My friends who travel by another road;
The slave is helpless to forsake his track,
Nor can the bondman lay aside his load
Sooner the stone might soften and be slack
Than love, who holds me in his strait abode.
Oh, to my soul a goad!
Love burns it through and through.
Transformed, united, who
Can sunder it from love?

Not iron nor the fire can separate
Or sunder those whom love doth so unite.
Not suffering nor death can reach the state
To which my soul is ravished. From its height,
Beneath it, lo! it sees all things create;
It dominates the range of dimmest sight.
My soul, by what a flight
Hast thou this high reward?
It is of Christ the Lord,
Embrace the Lord of love.

I have no longer eyes for forms of creatures
I cry to him who doth alone endure.
Though earth and heaven exhaust their varied natures,
Through love their forms are thin and no wise sure
When I had looked upon his splendid features,
Light of the sun itself was grown obscure
Cherubim, rare and pure
By knowledge and high thought,
The Seraphim, are naught
To him who looks on love.

If such a love confoundeth all my wit,
Against me let no blame henceforth be held.
No heart could fly if love should beckon it.
No heart could brave the anguish I have felt.
How is it able to endure such heat?
How is it that the poor heart doth not melt?
Ah! if I but beheld
A soul to take a part
Of pity for my heart,
To know the pains thereof!

I would love more and better if I could
My heart hath uttered all it ever knew.
I am not able, freely as I would,
To give the already given gift anew.
I gave myself, to hold, for all my good,
This Lover who reneweth bone and thew.
Beauty antique and new,
Since that my heart hath found
Light without pause or bound;
Oh, splendour of thy love!

Seeing such wealth of beauty, I am drawn
Without myself; am born I know not where.
My heart doth yield, and, being held in pawn,
Like wax receives the seal love setteth there.
So rash a bargain never yet was drawn.
To put on Christ I strip me stark and bare.
My heart, transformed and fair,
For very love doth weep;
Waves of its sweetness steep
My heart in boundless love.

My soul transformed, almost the very Christ;
One with her God, she is almost divine;
Riches above all riches to be priced,
All that is Christ's is hers, and she is queen
How can I still be sad, despair-enticed,
Or ask for medicines to cure my spleen?
The fetid sweet from sin,
With sweetness overspread;
The old forgot and dead,
In the new reign of love.

In Christ a goodly creature am I born.
The old stripped off, I am a new made man.
But with a knife my heart is gashed and torn,
Where flaming love, a molten metal, ran.
Wisdom and sense burnt off and wholly shorn,
Christ is my own, and beauty beyond ken.
Flung in his arms' great span,
The cry of love rings higher:
Love, whom I so desire,
Make me to die of Love.

For thee, for love, I languish and I burn
I sigh for thy embraces soon and late.
When thou art hence, I live and die; I yearn
And groan and whine in very piteous state
To find thee; and my heart, at thy return,
Fainteth with fear lest aught should separate
Therefore no longer wait.
Come, love, to succour me.
Compel me; bound to thee,
Consume my heart with love.

I am grown dumb, discreet discourse who held,
Once I could see the light who now am blind.
Such an abyss has never been beheld.
But mute, I speak; I fly, in chains confined;
Falling I mount; I hold and am compelled;
I follow, my pursuer pants behind.
O passion unconfined!
My folly is complete,
By reason of the heat,
The fury of the stove.

CHRIST:

Virtue availeth not without control.
Control the love wherewith thou lovest me.
Do thou with virtue renovate thy soul;
Since thou desirest so to come at me.
Controlled and duly ordered, sane and whole,
I will the love which thou shalt offer me.
How doth one prove a tree,
If not by what it yield?
Worth in this wise is sealed
To all things, by a proof.

Everything which I have formed and made
I made with number, measure and array.
Unto their end all things in rank are laid;
By order 'tis all things pass not away.
Love, more than all the rest, is held and staid
In order by its nature, in a way.
But if the fervent ray
Of love hath made thee mad
And shapeless, be not glad;
Fervour hath ruined love.

FRANCIS:

O Christ, now thou hast stolen my heart, thou say'st:
" Set thy soul's love in order, " to thy worm.
But how, transformed in thee, so deeply graced,
Can I be lord of me, or rule the storm?
As iron in the fire grows plastic paste,
As air transfixed by sun grows light and warm.
And lose their ancient form,
And take a new allure,
So be my soul, grown pure,
Clad on with thee in love.

Why hast thou brought me to a fiery place,
If thou wilt have me to be temperate?
When without measure thou didst give thy grace,
Thou didst confound all sense of size and weight.
Small thou didst fill my small heart's utmost space;
I have no scope to hold thee being great
If I be desperate,
The fault is thine, not mine,
O thou who didst define
Conditions of our love.

Thou canst not shield thyself from love. Love brought
Thee captive by the road from heaven to earth.
Thou didst descend to lowness to be naught,
To roam a man rejected from thy lowly lot;
No house nor field enhanced thy lowly lot;
Poor thou hast given riches and great worth.
In life, in death, no dearth
Of love hast thou declared.
Thy heart hath flamed and flared
With nothing else but love.

Wisdom remembered not to stint or rein
Thy love, when passion bade the whole be poured.
Thou wert not flesh, but love, in frame and brain;
Love made thee man to bear our sin's reward.
Thy love required the cross, the world's disdain
Thou didst not profit thee to speak a word
To Pilate, or the horde
Of those who wrought thy woe;
Yearning to take the blow
Upon the cross of love.

Love, love, how thou hast dealt a bitter wound!
I cry for nothing now but love alone.
Love, love, to thee I am securely bound;
I can embrace none other than my own
Love, love, so strongly hast thou wrapt me round,
My heart by love for ever overthrown,
For Love I am full prone.
Love, but to be with thee!
O love, in mercy be
My death, my death of love.

Love, love, O Jesus, I have reached the port,
Love, love, O Jesus, whither thou hast led.
Love, love, 'tis thou hast given me support.
Love, love, for ever am I comforted.
Love, love, thou has inflamed me in such sort,
The goal of love is reached, and I am dead.
To love for ever wed,
Love hath cemented both
Our hearts in perfect troth
Of everlasting love.
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