Stanza Two

Oh! What strange charm encrampt my heart with spite

Making my love gleam upon a toy?

Lay out cartloads of love upon a mite?

Scarce lay a mite of love on thee, my Joy?                             10

Oh, lovely thou, shalt not thou loved be?

Shall I a-shame thee thus? Oh! Shame for me!

Summary: 

The argument of the poem begins to come more in focus here:  The poet demands of himself, why do I so love this thing so unworthy of love, a “toy”.

Notes:

The concept of “toy” here emphasizes unimportance or triviality far more than a plaything which might be precious to a child. For instance, Shakespeare, has Macbeth upon “hearing” that the king has been murdered, say with multiple levels of irony:

Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There ‘s nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.

That is, “life is meaningless” it is but a toy.

His love “gleams” upon the toy. His love produces a light which makes the toy visible. It is a striking image of love enlightening an object. Coupled with “strange charm” in the first stanza, we have an image of some sort of witchcraft:

Oh! What strange charm encrampt my heart with spite

Making my love gleam upon a toy?

Although not a direct allusion, there seems to be something in the background here of Paul to the Galatians, “Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth” (Gal. 3:1) Something so inexplicable must be the result of a spell. Remember, that while our public culture has either a bemused or a sort of positive view of such things, Taylor would have found the idea horrifying and wicked. 

Encrampt: His heart is brought under the control of something foreign (the spell) and thus does not function rightly. His heart is unnaturally constrained.

This brings us to the “spite” lying at the source of this spell which constrains his heart to fix its attention upon a pointless object. 

Another image from Shakespeare helps, where the Tatiana Queen of the Fairies falls in love the imbecile Bottom whose human head has been replaced with a donkey head. She has fallen in love by means of a spell meant to humble her.

This brings us to the incredulous irony: 

Lay out cartloads of love upon a mite?

Scarce lay a mite of love on thee, my Joy?     

We have here a biblical allusion: Cartloads of treasure were brought to Moses by the leaders of each tribe at the setting up of the tabernacle. A mite reminds us of the widow who could only give a mite. It was an insignificant offering. And so a treasure of love is being loaded upon something meaningless, which his “joy” is being neglected.

The joy is identified in the first line of the poem as “My Lord, my life.” He has fallen profoundly in love with something which is utterly valueless and has in the same moment neglected his Lord and life. The only explanation can be some hideous spell.

We then end with the couplet providing a judgment upon the situation: 

Oh, lovely thou, shalt not thou loved be?

Shall I a-shame thee thus? Oh! Shame for me!

He is shaming the true object of his love by withholding honor to whom honor is due and showering that upon a trifle. It is a shame, because the it is a deliberate dishonor. But in the end, it is the poet who is in shame by loving something so valueless.

Prosody:

Oh! What strange charm encrampt my heart with spite

Making my love gleam upon a toy?

Lay out cartloads of love upon a mite?

Scarce lay a mite of love on thee, my Joy?                             10

Oh, lovely thou, shalt not thou loved be?

Shall I a-shame thee thus? Oh! Shame for me!

An interesting aspect of this stanza is the accent of the first syllable of every line (except the last). Also note the trochees as well as the repeated L alliteration: love/lay

OH what STRANGE CHARM

MAKING my LOVE GLEAM

LAY out CARTloads of LOVE

SCARCE LAY a MITE of LOVE

OH LOVELY thou, shalt not THOU LOVed BE?

There is the fine wordplay in the last line on a-shame/shame which works with the internal rhyme on “thee/me”.