“Oh, a kiss, long as my exile,
Sweet as my revenge.”—SHAKSPERE.
“A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love.”
“For a kiss’s strength
I think it must be measured by its length.”—BYRON.
“A kiss now that will hang upon my lip
As sweet as morning dew upon a rose,
And full as long.”—THOMAS MIDDLETON.
Perhaps the longest kiss on record is that which Siegfried gives
Brünnhilde in the drama of _Siegfried_. But this is not an ordinary
kiss, for the hero has to wake with it the Valkyrie from the twenty
years’ sleep into which old Wotan had plunged her for disobeying his
orders. Thanks to Wagner’s art, the thrill of this Love-kiss, magically
transmuted into tones, is felt by a thousand spectators simultaneously
with the lover.
Love-kisses are innumerable. Thus sings the Italian poet, Cecco
Angiolieri, in the thirteenth century—
“Because the stars are fewer in heaven’s span
Than all those kisses wherewith I kept time
All in an instant (I who now have none!)
Upon her mouth (I and no other man!)
So sweetly on the twentieth day of June
On the New Year twelve hundred ninety-one.”
ROSSETTI’S TRANSL.
Novelists and poets have exhausted their ingenuity in finding adjectives
descriptive of Love-kisses and others. An anonymous essayist has
compiled the following list:—
“Kisses are forced, unwilling, cold, comfortless, frigid, and frozen,
chaste, timid, rosy, balmy, humid, dewy, trembling, soft, gentle,
tender, tempting, fragrant, sacred, hallowed, divine, soothing, joyful,
affectionate, delicious, rapturous, deep-drawn, impressive, quick, and
nervous, warm, burning, impassioned, inebriating, ardent, flaming, and
akin to fire, ravishing, lingering, long. One also hears of parting,
tear-dewed, savoury, loathsome, poisonous, treacherous, false, rude,
stolen, and great fat, noisy kisses.”