The Kiss

What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
Or seizure of malign vicissitude
Can rob this body of honor, or denude
This soul of wedding-raiment worn today?
For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
With these lips such consonant interlude
As lauded Orpheus longed for when he wooed
The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

I was a child beneath her touch-a man
When breast to breast we clung, even I and she-
A spirit when her spirit looked through me-
A god when all our life-breath met to fan
Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardors ran
'Fire within fire, desire in deity'






Dante Gabriel Rossetti