XXXVlll. First time he kissed me, he but only kissed – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“
XXXVlll. First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its “Oh, list,”
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love’s own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, “My love, my own.”
________________________
had the sonnet allowed for more lines,
instead of its strict fourteen, this poem
could not ‘ve not become indecent,
“purple”, she says, indeed
nor, for that matter, more clear, Elizabeth
has succumbed to his one, two, three
kisses, enough to now call him “[m]y love,
my own”
meed is a reward, and archaic
chrism is holy anointing oil, nearly also
now, but sacramentally, lost
so intimate a declaration as this would’ve
been unprecedented in 1845-46, when
these poems were written, though we’re
used to much more flagrant stuff nowadays
that this had been written by a woman
must’ve been nearly scandalous, though
such was allowing the Romantic Age, and
this “most flagrant” expression would
become eventually its very symbol, the
exploration of the human heart, the highly
intimate revelations of an individual soul
Elizabeth Barrett Browning holds the top
spot here, nobody does it better
in intrinsically less overtly graphic music,
Chopin
Richard Strauss does a similar thing in his
opera “Salome” several years later, several,
indeed, decades later, 1905, but in reverse,
Salome wants to first of all touch John the
Baptist’s skin, he won’t allow it, undaunted
she asks to touch his black hair, nor will
he allow that, she insists further on a kiss,
which doesn’t either come, the scene is
lurid and shocking
“nothing in the world is as red as your
mouth”, she begs, “let me kiss it, your
mouth”
my dear, I cautioned
later she will dance the “Dance of the Seven
Veils“, lately performed even, after the veils
are, one by one, off, naked
for which she gets John the Baptist’s head,
and finally gets her kiss
honest
the version I saw was unforgettable,
though it had taken a free ticket to
get me there
Richard
psst: you’ll note, incidentally, that this poem
is not an avowal, but a confidence,
spoken to us, not to him, a not
insignificant factor
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