MEMORABLE KISSES.
That was a wonderful kiss which Fatima received from her lover:
“Last night when some one spoke his name,
From my swift blood that went and came,
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shivered in my narrow frame.
Oh, love! oh, fire! Once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul through
My lips—as sunlight drinketh dew.”[7]
Then there was the precious kiss which Margarida gave her troubadour lover, when “she stretched out her arms and sweetly embraced him in the love-chamber,” which coming to the knowledge of her husband (Raimon de Roussillon), he gave her the troubadour’s heart to eat, disguised as a savory morsel. And there was Francesca’s kiss, so sweet and yet so sad, so guilty and so pure, when trembling Paolo kissed her and they read no more that day. And there are the kisses that Antony wasted a world so gladly for, “on a brow of Egypt,”—or rather, we suspect, on lips of Egypt,—and Othello’s farewell kisses, which, tender and heart-broken as they were, had no magic in them to redeem poor Desdemona’s life. Who does not remember that grand kiss of Coriolanus—