You turn, and stop, and run, and turn, Or hydrants bade thy scanty rill Last thursday morn, so very cold, How much I'd praise thee, sweetest Gutter! ΤΟ SHALL Orpheus be forever praised, And you neglected here remain, Quantum Oscula sunt labris nostra morata tuis! says the love-begone PROPERTIUS; and all the modern amatory poets delight to linger on a kiss. Juvat me mora longa basiorum, cries SANNAZARIUS; Et modo sint longâ basia ducta morâ, responds ETRUSCUS. PONTANUS complains to a cruel girl, that he had scarcely sipped of her lips; and we are not surprised at his wishing to drink a little deeper, since he describes them as succi plena, tenella, molli cella, &c. In some lines attributed to COR. GALLUS, he asks for "billing kisses,” Da, columbatim, mitia basia. And SECUNDUS, who sighs for an everlasting one (perenne basium), requests that it may be gratis non sine morsibus. This is truly "plucking up kisses by the roots;" and we may reasonably presume, that this gentleman felt before BOILEAU, the propriety of the remark, C'est peu d'être poëte, il faut être amoureux. There is surely much affectation and absurdity in expressing in a language foreign to himself, and one which the mistress to whom his poems were addressed could not understand, those sentiments which should be the spontaneous effusions of the heart. The shortness of the Basium, of which the following is a translation, is not its least merit. FROM JOANNES SECUNDUS. Da mihi suaviolum (dicebam), blanda puella! GIVE me, dear girl, one rapturous kiss! As one would from an adder start, A kiss, my life!-this bids me live Enflamed with wilder ardours-this Is but a prelude to a kiss. |