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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Sonnet VI. The Kiss

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

Sonnet VI. The Kiss

By Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
 
(From The House of Life, 1881)

WHAT smouldering senses in death’s sick delay
  Or seizure of malign vicissitude
  Can rob this body of honour, or denude
This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
  For lo! even now my Lady’s lips did play        5
  With these my lips such consonant interlude
  As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
The half-drawn hungering face with that busy lay.
 
I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
  When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—        10
  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 ardours ran,
  Fire within fire, desire in deity.