Amor, amore, famme ’n te transire;
Amor, dolce languire,
Amor mio desioso,
Amor mio delettoso,
Annegame en amore.
But Lull, who, like Jacopone, owed most of his fervour, under God, to St. Francis, has a note of his own, no less deep, no less pure. His key is perhaps in that eloquent definition, which has been slightly expanded in translation that the full force of every phrase may be felt:
‘What meanest thou by love?’ said the Beloved. And the Lover answered: ‘It is to bear on one’s heart the sacred marks and the sweet words of the Beloved. It is to long for Him with desire and with tears. It is boldness. It is fervour. It is fear. It is the desire for the Beloved above all things. It is that which causes the Lover to grow faint when he hears the Beloved’s praises. It is that in which I die daily, and in which is all my will.’
Lull might well have written, as did a late Franciscan, John of the Angels, of the ‘Triumphs of the Love of God.’
Love impels him to tread the Mystic Way ‘in search of his Beloved.’ Much of his Book, therefore, deals with the Mystic Life. But it has none of the exclusiveness of the Living Flame of Love and the Spiritual Canticle. There are passages for the beginner as well as for the proficient, parables in three lines for the plain man, sermons in phrases, reflections which, by their very simplicity, kindle the devotion of the wayfaring man as he reads them. As we read the brief records of imaginary conversations between the Lover and ‘those who asked him concerning his Beloved,’ we can imagine ourselves in some African coast-town where the stranger who has just landed is being pressed, by the surging crowd which surrounds him, to give reasons for his faith. The calm and confident answers supply the secret of Lull’s power.
Then we come upon some quaintly-worded, paradoxical phrase which only reflection will illumine and meditation make real. And we know that we are following in the path of Lull when he composed his treatise. For it was the fruit, not of subtleties, but of silence. ‘He would engage in prayer,’ runs the preface, ‘and meditate upon God and His virtues, after which he would write down the outcome of his contemplation.’ And again, more concretely: ‘At midnight he arose, looked out upon the heavens and the stars, and cast away from him all thoughts of the world.’