Jane Digby- Th Pursuit Of Love Poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

Born in 1807, lady Jane Digby
Was as romantic as of adventure.
Even at sixteen she turned the nobles on.
Her parents had counted on her beauty.

Her marriage with Lord Ellenborough,
A rich, thirty year old widower, failed.
She bore him a boy to make him potent.
She waned away and was sought by lovers.

She fell in love with Prince Falix.
Neither of them buried their secret.
A marriage with him could not be made
As he, a catholic, cannot wed a divorcee.

‘Jane Digby was'Prince Falix acknowledged,
‘Among the greatest beauties of her time.
She had given up everything for him-
Fortune, reputation, friends, and family.'

Tired of being admired, desired and sought,
She set of to see the rest of the world.
She became mistress of King Ludwig,
Whom she was fond of but not in love with

‘Without love feeling, life is a dreary void.
Loving and being loved is air to breathe.'
With is in mind she fell for the Baron,
A Bavarian noble man, young and handsome.

He proposed but she was hesitant,
Thinking about her love for Prince Falix.
‘There exists something in a first passion
That no time can efface.' she felt and wrote.

The king helped her marry the Baron,
Suspecting the seed she carried as his.
But the child was the image of the Boran.
She bore him one more before she parted.

Count Theotoki, a Greek, was her next lover.
There were secret assignations with him.
She was required to choose between two men
Who wished to behave more nobly than the other.

‘No woman will ever posses me, dear,
As you have possessed me. A mistress
I will have but i cannot have another Jane.',
Wrote the Baron, accepting her parting.

She went to live and love Theotoki,
Saddened at pain she has caused to the Baron.
Getting divorced, she married Theotoki
And stalled it after several years.

At sixty plus, General Hadji Petros,
Was attractive to women and the queen.
At forty five, Jane became his mistress
And felt freer as mistress than as a wife.

Her last lover was Medjuei, an Arab.
He was fascinated by Jane from the first.
He presented to her a beautiful mare.
When he proposed she accepted instantly.

She discovered that he had all the qualities
She had sought in other men. She exclaimed,
‘I'm forty seven and as much in love
As a young girl of fifteen years old.'

Jane and Medjuel married for thirty years.
It was a passionate relationship to the end.
‘Had i in early life married the Sheikh
I could not have caused so much grief.'

In 1881 Jane died with him beside.
As the service in the cemetery over,
Astride Jane's Arab mare, his gift to her,
He galloped away, gazing the coffin.

For her love mattered, which she sought in men.
15.01.2018