This article discusses on Cikkadēvarāja Saptapadi, a Kannada love poem, written by one of the court poets of a Maisūru (Mysore) king, Cikka Dēva Rāja (r.1673–1704) in South India. The poem mainly consists of fifty-three independent songs (padas) and its theme is love affairs between the king Cikka Dēva Rāja and various anonymous women. It is richly influenced by Indian classical poetics. For example, just as classical poetics classifies heroines (nāyikās) by their psychological states (avasthā), this poem portrays its heroines according to the same classification. The theology of Śrīvaiṣṇava Saṃpradāya, one of the major Hindu sects in south India, also has greatly influenced the poem. The relationship between the hero and the heroines is delineated as analogous to what the sect’s theologians described as the relationship between the god and devotees. In particular, the concluding section of the poem, which deals with fulfilled and enjoyed love (saṃbhoga), is permeated by idioms and concepts of the sect’s doctrine of submission to the god (prapatti). The characterizations of the hero and heroines in the poem are also profoundly affected by the sect’s ideas. For instance, the hero-king of the poem is praised for his generous and spontaneous compassion which the sect’s theology regards as one of the most important qualities of the god. This stands in contrast to other courtly poems of early modern South India, recently examined by some scholars. In those poems heroes-kings are often praised for their sexual attraction and exploits, indicating that sensual enjoyment (bhoga) was an important constituent of political authority in South India of that period. The representation of the king as a compassionate, rather than passionate hero in Cikkadēvarāja Saptapadi shows us a different aspect of the political culture of early modern South India.