That with my tongue I felt them and could taste
The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist!
That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat
Thy breasts like honey."
Dr. Donne, however, had anticipated him in the same vein:—
"As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
As that, which from chaf'd muskats' pores doth trill,
As the almighty balm of the early east,
Such are the sweat drops of my mistress' breast;
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets."
These poets ever delight in the strangest and most far-fetched comparisons. Cleveland has a magnificent comparison of the sun to a coal-pit; but Rossetti, twenty times more cunning and subtle, sees that "vows" are the merest bricks:—
"We strove
To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home
Which memory haunts." (Page 208.)
Cowley compares his heart to a hand-grenado; in a similar spirit, Rossetti compares the Soul to a town, and (bent to hunt the simile to death) tells us that there are by-streets there, and that Hopes go about hunting for adventures at the public-houses!—
"So through that soul in restless brotherhood,
They roam together now, and wind among
It's bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns!" (Page 231.)
Dr. John Donne is great on Tears: they are at one time "globes, nay worlds," containing their "Europe, Asia, and Africa;" and at another they are "wine," bottled "in crystal vials" for the tipple of lovers. Mr. Rossetti, in a semi-military spirit, thus describes a Moan:—
"A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary!"
