Love’s passives are his activ’st part.
The wounded is the wounding heart.

Crashaw’s couplet turns a devotional paradox into a compact theory of love’s power. What looks like passivity—yielding, suffering, being “wounded”—is presented as love’s most energetic action. The line suggests that true love works by self-surrender rather than domination: the lover’s vulnerability becomes the very means by which love acts upon others. The second line intensifies the reversal: the heart that is hurt is also the heart that hurts (i.e., pierces) in return, implying that love’s capacity to move and transform comes from its openness to pain. In a religious register typical of Crashaw, the “wounded heart” can also evoke Christ-like charity, where suffering becomes active redemptive force.