The sighing rubies of those heavenly lips,
The Cupids which breasts' golden apples keep,
Those eyes which shine in midst of their eclipse;
And he them all shall see, perhaps and prove
She waking but persuadeth, now forceth love."
I have quoted this poem entire, because it is quite in the modern spirit, and would certainly, if printed in either Mr. Swinburne's or Mr. Rossetti's poems, have been considered beautiful; and partly because I should like the reader to compare it with the Swinburnian conception of "Love and Sleep, as known to the moderns:"—
"Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark with bare throat made to bite!
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect coloured without white or red;
And her lips opened amorously, and said—
I wist not what, saving one word—Delight!
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs,
And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire."
Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, p. 316.
The reader whom this fascinates had better turn to Dr. Donne's eighteenth elegy, every line of which might have been written in our generation, wherein the nude female is compared to a Globe for the lover's exploration, and the whole Voyage is described with a terrific realism of detail and daring strength of metaphor which would fill even Mr. Rossetti with envy and despair. It is, unfortunately, rather too strong to quote, though not a grain more filthy than the above sonnet. Let me turn, by way of disinfectant, to a
