He will kiss me on the mouth
Then; and lead me as a lover
Through the crowds that praise his deeds.
Mrs. Browning.
Love feareth death! I was no child—I was betrothed that day;
I wore a troth-kiss on my lips I could not give away.
Mrs. Browning.
Kiss, baby, kiss! mothers’ lips shine by kisses;
Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings;
Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses
Tend thee the kiss that poisons ’mid caressings.
Charles Lamb.
Both our mouths went wandering in one way,
And, aching sorely, met among the leaves;
Our hands, being left behind, strained far away.
Wm. Morris: Defence of Guinevere.
I saw you kissing once: like a curved sword,
That bites with all its edge, did your lips lie.
Wm. Morris: Defence of Guinevere.
And with a velvet lip print on his brow
Such language as the tongue hath never spoken.
Mrs. Sigourney.
There was a beam in that young mother’s eye, ’
Lit by the feelings that she could not speak,
As from her lips a plaintive lullaby
Stirred the bright tresses on her infant’s cheek;
While now and then, with melting heart, she prest
Soft kisses o’er its red and smiling lips,—
Lips sweet as rosebuds in fresh beauty dressed
Ere the young murmuring bee their honey sips.
Mrs. Welby.
Oh, turn from me those radiant eyes,
With love’s dark lightning beaming,
Or veil the power that in them lies
To set the young heart dreaming.
...
What pity that thy lips of rose,
So fitted for heart-healing,
Should not with tenderest kisses close
The wounds thine eyes are dealing!
Motherwell.
She tenderly kissed me,
She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently
To sleep on her breast—
Deeply to sleep
From the heaven of her breast.
E. A. Poe.
Oh, stay, Madonna! stay;
’Tis not the dawn of day
That marks the skies with yonder opal streak;
The stars in silence shine;
Then press thy lips to mine,
And rest upon my neck thy fervid cheek.
Macaulay.
A moment, and he saw her come,—
That maiden, from her latticed home,
With eyes all love, and lips apart,
And faltering step, and beating heart,
She came, and joined her cheek to his
In one prolonged and rapturous kiss;
And while it thrilled through heart and limb,
The world was naught to her or him.
Praed.
Oh! Vidal’s very soul did weep
Whene’er that music, like a charm,
Brought back from their unlistening sleep
The kissing lip and clasping arm.
Praed.

How shall I woo her? I will bow
Before the holy shrine,
And pray the prayer, and vow the vow,
And press her lips to mine;
And I will tell her, when she parts
From passion’s thrilling kiss,
That memory to many hearts
Is dearer far than bliss.
Praed.
She loved the ripples’ play,
As to her feet the truant rovers
Wandered and went with a laugh away,
Kissing but once, like wayward lovers.
Praed.
Deep is the bliss of the belted knight,
When he kisses at dawn the silken glove,
And goes, in his glittering armor dight,
To shiver a lance for his Lady-Love!
Praed.
Dream, while the chill sea-foam
In mockery dashes o’er thee,
Of the cheerful hearth, and the quiet home,
And the kiss of her that bore thee.
Praed.
I wept and blessed thee, called thee o’er and o’er
By that dear name which I must use no more;
And kissed with passionate lips the empty air,
As if thy image stood before me there.
Anon.: Josephine to Napoleon.

My heart can kiss no heart but thine,
And if these lips but rarely pine
In the pale abstinence of sorrow,
It is that nightly I divine,
As I this world-sick soul recline,
I shall be with thee ere the morrow.
Bailey: Festus.
The smile, the sigh, the tear, and the embrace—
All the delights of love at last in one,
With kisses close as stars in the Milky Way.
Bailey: Festus.
Frown—toss about—let her lips be for a time:
But steal a kiss at last like fire from heaven.
Bailey: Festus.
Oh, weep not—wither not the soul
Made saturate with bliss;
I would not have one briny tear
Embitter Beauty’s kiss.
Bailey: Festus.
Mother’s kiss
Was ne’er more welcome to the waking child,
After a dream of horrors, than the breeze
Upon my feverish brow.
Anon.: Saul.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life! the days that are no more.
Tennyson: Princess.

The trance gave way
To those caresses, when a hundred times
In that last kiss, which never was the last,
Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died.
Tennyson: Love and Duty.
Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.
Tennyson: Locksley Hall.
When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
By the home that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixed with kisses sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth.
Tennyson: Maud.
They found the stately horse,
Who now, no more a vassal to the thief,
But free to stretch his limbs in lawful flight,
Neighed with all gladness as they came, and stooped
With a low whinny toward the pair; and she
Kissed the white star upon his noble front,
Glad also: then Geraint upon the horse
Mounted, and reached a hand, and on his foot
She set her own and climbed; he turned his face
And kissed her climbing, and she cast her arms
About him, and at once they rode away.
Tennyson: Enid.

Ah, one rose,
One rose, but one, by those fair fingers culled,
Were worth a hundred kisses pressed on lips
Less exquisite than thine.
Tennyson: Gardener’s Daughter.
Then stood the maiden hushed in sweet surprise,
And with her clasped hands held her heart-throbs down
Beneath the wondrous brightness of his eyes,
Whose smile seemed to enwreathe her like a crown.
He raised no wand, he gave no strange commands,
But touched her eyes with tender touch and light,
With charmed lips kissed apart her folded hands,
And laid therein the lily, snowy white.
Wilson: Magic Pitcher.
Ah, sad are they who know not love,
But, far from passion’s tears and smiles,
Drift down a moonless sea, beyond
The silvery coasts of fairy isles.
And sadder they whose longing lips
Kiss empty air, and never touch
The dear warm mouth of those they love—
Waiting, wasting, suffering much.
Aldrich: Persian Love-Song.
Yes, child, I know I am out of tune;
The light is bad; the sky is gray;
I’ll work no more this afternoon,
So lay your royal robes away.
Besides, you’re dreamy—hand on chin—
I know not what—not in the vein:
While I would paint Anne Boleyn,
You sit there looking like Elaine.
Not like the youthful, radiant queen,
Unconscious of the coming woe,
But rather as she might have been,
Preparing for the headsman’s blow.
I see! I’ve put you in a miff—
Sitting bolt upright, wrist on wrist.
How should you look? Why, dear, as if—
Somehow—as if you’d just been kissed!
Aldrich: In an Atelier.
We had talked long; and then a silence came;
And in the topmost firs
To his nest the white dove floated like a flame;
And my lips closed on hers
Who was the only She,
And in one girl all womanhood to me.
Palgrave.
Fly, white-winged sea-bird, following fast,
That dips around our foamy wake,
Go nestle in her virgin breast,
And kiss her pure lips for my sake.
Sailor’s Valentine.
He who wandered with the peasant Jew,
And broke with publicans the bread of shame,
And drank with blessings in His Father’s name
The water which Samaria’s outcast drew,
Hath now His temples upon every shore,
Altar and shrine and priest,—and incense dim
Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,
From lips which press the temple’s marble floor,
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread Cross He bore!
Whittier.
Lament who will the ribald line
Which tells his lapse[15] from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen
Like her may be forgiven.
Whittier.
Oh to have dwelt in Bethlehem
When the star of the Lord shone bright!
To have sheltered the holy wanderers
On that blessed Christmas night!
To have kissed the tender wayworn feet
Of the Mother undefiled,
And, with reverent wonder and deep delight,
To have tended the Holy Child!
Adelaide Procter.
“What more have I to give you?
Why give you anything?
You had my rose before, sir,
And now you have my ring.”
“You have forgotten one thing.”
“I do not understand.”
“The dew goes with the rose-bud,
And with the ring the hand!”
She gave her hand; he took it,
And kissed it o’er and o’er:
“I give myself to you, love;
I cannot give you more!”
Stoddard: The Lady’s Gift.
And Halfred the Scald said, “This
In the name of the Lord I kiss,
Who on it was crucified!”
And a shout went round the board,
“In the name of Christ the Lord,
Who died!”
Longfellow.
They climb up into my turret
O’er the arms and back of my chair:
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses;
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine.
Longfellow: The Children’s Hour.
Men and devils both contrive
Traps for catching girls alive;
Eve was duped, and Helen kissed,—
How, oh, how can you resist?
Holmes.
Kiss but the crystal’s mystic rim,
Each shadow rends its flowery chain,
Springs in a bubble from its brim,
And walks the chambers of the brain.
Holmes.
Now, why thy long delaying?
Alack! thy beads and praying!
If thou, a saint, dost hope
To kneel and kiss the Pope,
Then I, a sinner, know
Where sweeter kisses grow—
Nay, now, just one before we go!
Tilton: Flight from the Convent.

[Before closing this portion of our selections, it is worth while to note the popular misconception of the favorite ditty “Coming through the Rye,” as shown in the pictorial illustrations which present a laddie and lassie meeting and kissing in a field of grain. The lines,—

“If a laddie meet a lassie
Comin’ thro’ the rye,”

and especially the other couplet,—

“A’ the lads they smile on me
When comin’ thro’ the rye,”

seem to imply that traversing the rye was a habitual or common thing; but what in the name of the Royal Agricultural Society could be the object in trampling down a crop of grain in that style? The song, perhaps, suggests a harvest-scene, where both sexes, as is the custom in Great Britain, are at work reaping, and where they would come and go through the field indeed, but not through the rye itself, so as to meet and kiss in it. The truth is, the rye in this case is no more grain than Rye Beach is, it being the name of a small shallow stream near Ayr, in Scotland, which, having neither bridge nor ferry, was forded by the people going to and from the market, custom allowing a lad to steal a kiss from any lass of his acquaintance whom he met in mid-stream. Reference to the first verse, in which the lass is shown as wetting her clothes in the stream, confirms this explanation:

“Jenny is a’ wat, puir bodie;
Jenny’s seldom dry;
She drag’lt a’ her petticoatie,
Comin’ thro’ the rye.”]

EXTRACTS FROM THE OLD BALLADS.

MARRIAGE OF GILBERT BECKET.

And quickly hied he down the stair;
Of fifteen steps he made but three;
He’s ta’en his bonny love in arms,
And kist, and kist her tenderlie.

BIRTH OF ROBIN HOOD.

He took his bonny boy in his arms,
And kist him tenderlie;
Says, “Though I would your father hang,
Your mother’s dear to me.”
He kist him o’er and o’er again:
“My grandson I thee claim;
And Robin Hood in gude greenwood,
And that shall be your name.”

DOWSABELL.

With that she bent her snow-white knee,
Down by the shepheard kneeled she,
And him she sweetely kist:
With that the shepheard whooped for joy,
Quoth he, “Ther’s never shepheard’s boy
That ever was so blist.”

GILDEROY.

Aft on the banks we’d sit us thair,
And sweetly kiss and toy,
Wi’ garlands gay wad deck my hair
My handsome Gilderoy.

PATIENT COUNTESS.

He took her in his armes, as yet
So coyish to be kist,
As mayds that know themselves beloved,
And yieldingly resist.

FRIAR OF ORDERS GRAY.

But first upon my true love’s grave
My weary limbs I’ll lay,
And thrice I’ll kiss the green-grass turf
That wraps his breathless clay.

GENTLE HERDSMAN.

When thus I saw he loved me well,
I grewe so proud his paine to see,
That I, who did not know myselfe,
Thought scorne of such a youth as hee,
And grewe soe coy and nice to please,
As women’s lookes are often soe,
He might not kisse, nor hand forsooth,
Unlesse I willed him soe to doe.

FAIR ROSAMOND.

And falling down all in a swoone
Before King Henry’s face,
Full oft he in his princelye armes
Her bodye did embrace:
And twentye times, with watery eyes,
He kist her tender cheeke,
Untill he had revivde againe
Her senses milde and meeke.

LUNATIC LOVER.

I’ll court you, and think you fair,
Since love does distract my brain:
I’ll go, I’ll wed the night-mare,
And kiss her, and kiss her again.

CHILD WATERS.

Shee saies, I had rather have one kisse,
Child Waters, of thy mouth,
Than I wolde have Cheshire and Lancashire both,
That lye by north and south.

PHILLIDA AND CORYDON.

Love, that had bene long deluded,
Was with kisses sweete concluded;
And Phillida with garlands gaye
Was made the lady of the Maye.

FAIR MARGARET AND SWEET WILLIAM.

I’ll do more for thee, Margaret,
Than any of thy kin;
For I will kiss thy pale wan lips,
Though a smile I cannot win.
With that bespake the seven brethren,
Making most piteous moan:
“You may go kiss your jolly brown bride,
And let our sister alone.”
“If I do kiss my jolly brown bride,
I do but what is right;
I ne’er made a vow to yonder poor corpse,
By day, nor yet by night.”

SWEET WILLIAM’S GHOST.

“Thy faith and troth thou’se nevir get,
Of me shalt nevir win,
Till that thou come within my bower
And kiss my cheek and chin.”
“If I should come within thy bower,
I am no earthly man:
And should I kiss thy rosy lipp,
Thy days will not be lang.”

LADY’S FALL.

“And there,” quoth hee, “Ile meete my deare,
If God soe lend me life,
On this day month without all fayle
I will make thee my wife.”
Then with a sweete and loving kisse,
They parted presentlye,
And att their partinge brinish teares
Stoode in eche other’s eye.