No. 33.
When a young man, passion-laden,
In a chamber meets a maiden,
Then felicitous communion,
By love's strain between the twain,
Grows from forth their union;
For the game, it hath no name,
Of lips, arms, and hidden charms.
Nor can I here forbear from inserting another Poem of Privacy, bolder in its openness of speech, more glowing in its warmth of colouring. If excuse should be pleaded or the translation and reproduction of this distinctly Pagan ditty, it must be found in the singularity of its motive, which is as unmedieval as could be desired by the bitterest detractor of medieval sentiment. We seem, while reading it, to have before our eyes the Venetian picture of a Venus, while the almost prosaic particularity of description illustrates what I have said above about the detailed realism of the Goliardic style.