In Drummond heavenly love is a progression out of the romantic love of woman. It is not explicitly so stated in the “Song,” but in a sonnet, the subject of which refers to the young woman of the longer poem, he writes:
“Sith it hath pleas’d that First and only Fair
To take that beauty to himself again,
Which in this world of sense not to remain,
But to amaze, was sent, and home repair;
The love which to that beauty I did bear
(Made pure of mortal spots which did it stain,
And endless, which even death cannot impair),
I place on Him who will it not disdain.”
(Poems, Second Pt. S. xiii.)