PLATONIC KISSES.
“What are they?” birdie, do you ask?
Your forehead wears a puckered line,
Oh! now you’ve found a dreadful task
Even for a learnèd head like mine.
Some questions are so hard! Ah, well,
If even Plato’s self were here,
The sage, I fancy, could not tell
The riddle that you ask me, dear.
My birdie, Plato was a sage,
The first to find he had a soul;
The life we live from youth to age,
His wisdom taught, was not the whole
And many theories Plato had
To rule the impulse of mankind,
Controlling all the base and bad
Through stern dominion of the mind.
And love, my birdie, Plato said,
Should be communion of the soul,
To glowing passion cold and dead,
And intellect should rule the whole.
Each soul another soul might find,
And spirit-intercourse reveal
A pure emotion of the mind,
Like that we think the angels feel.
But what Platonic kisses were
I doubt if Plato ever knew,—
Not like, my birdie, I infer,
The long, sweet kisses I give you,
And those you give me back again,
Repeated oft, and never done;
Not thus, I fancy, could it be
Platonic brides were ever won.
Philosophy, perhaps, had charms
To satisfy great Athens’ sage,
Indifferent to his lady’s arms,—
Two heads bent o’er one musty page.
But moderns, made of sterner stuff,
Would clothe it with a gentler light,
And, soul-communion not enough,
Both sense and spirit would unite.
Love’s sweetest charms they would not miss,
Nor into earthly passion fall,
So talk of a Platonic kiss,
And thus contrive to get it all.
But fondest theories, birdie sweet,
Oft bring a harvest of regret.
Now come and sit here at my feet.
Well, have you understood me, pet?
I thought not. What a pair of eyes!
I’ll have to send you back to school.
If Plato’s spirit could arise,
We’d tell the ghost he was a fool.
Now lift your sweet lips up to mine;
I like the language that they speak;
I know the rhetoric is not fine,—
What dreadful work they’d make of Greek!
Ah, how I love your little form!
And now—be sure you sit quite still—
Just hold my left hand, soft and warm;
Don’t shake the one that drives the quill.
Let Plato crown his love with bays,
I’ll make you mistress of my life.
I’ll love you, birdie, all my days,
And crown you with the name of wife.
