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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Madrigal 13. Soft, lovely, rose-like lips, conjoined with mine!

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Parthenophil and Parthenophe

Madrigal 13. Soft, lovely, rose-like lips, conjoined with mine!

Barnabe Barnes (1569?–1609)

SOFT, lovely, rose-like lips, conjoined with mine!

Breathing out precious incense such!

(Such as, at Paphos, smoke to VENUS’ shrine)

Making my lips immortal, with their touch!

My cheeks, with touch of thy soft cheeks divine;

Thy soft warm cheeks, which VENUS favours much!

Those arms, such arms! which me embraced,

Me, with immortal cincture girding round

Of everlasting bliss! then bound

With her enfolded thighs in mine entangled;

And both in one self-soul placed,

Made a hermaphrodite, with pleasures ravished!

There, heat for heat’s, soul for soul’s empire wrangled!

Why died not I, with love so largely lavished?

For ’wake (not finding truth of dreams before)

It secret vexeth ten times more!