Joy’s everlasting fire,
     Love’s glow of pure desire,
     Pang of the seething breast,
     Rapture a hallowed guest! 
     Darts pierce me through and through,
     Lances my flesh subdue,
     Clubs me to atoms dash,
     Lightnings 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 filled with ever new delight.