All the other poets, you must know, teach us that not only the mouth, but every part of our sweetheart's body says, "Kiss me."
Friends, if it only were my fate!
If fate would will it so,
I'd kiss her beauties small and great
From bosom down to toe.
So sings Aarestrup, and he returns again and again to the same idea in his ritorneller:
When scarce the mouth can longer feel such fooling,
Because thy lips are all too hotly burning,
Press them to bosom's Alpine snows for cooling.
The arms so white and tender woo caresses;
A lovely pleasance, too, those plump white shoulders!
But through the soul a bosom-kiss straight presses.
Her snow-white shoulders! All what may be said on
Such beauty I have uttered. For my guerdon
Grant me one now to rest my weary head on.
At kisses pressed upon your neck's fair closes
You thrilled and threw your head back, and I straightway
Planted upon your throat my kisses' roses.
About my darling I am wheeling, flying,
Like to a gadfly round a lily's chalice,
Buzzing until in nectar-cup mute dying.
Allow me also to call your attention to a pretty little myth which Dorat composed
