She lifted up his gory head,
And raised it to her lips to kiss;
She swooned away, and fell back dead,
In very sooth, as she did this.
W. F. H.
In ancient times lovers always demanded of each other this act of love. “When the alabaster box, filled with Syrian perfume, has been poured out over my dead body, then do thou, O Cynthia, press thy last kisses on my cold lips,” sings Propertius in one of his elegies:
Osculaque in gelidis pones suprema labellis,
Cum dabitur Syrio munere plenus onyx.
Propertius iii. 4, 29, 30.
And the same wish is expressed by Tibullus (I., i. 61, 62):
Flebis et arsuro positum me, Delia, lecto,
Tristibus et lacrymis oscula mixta dabis.
“You’ll weep for me, dear Delia, ere flames have caught my bier,
And mingle with your kisses full many a bitter tear.”
W. F. H.
The death-kiss is something so natural that it is superfluous to point out its existence amongst different nations. It was not only a mark of love, but it was also an article of belief that the soul might be detained for a brief while by such a kiss. Ovid, in his Tristia, laments over his joyless existence in Tomis, whither Augustus had banished him, and is in despair because, when the hour of death approaches, he will not have his beloved wife by his side to detain his fleeting spirit by her kisses mingled with tears.
The kiss is the last tender proof of love bestowed on one we have loved, and was believed, in ancient times, to follow mankind to the nether world. Even in our own days, popular belief in many places demands that the nearest relative shall kiss the corpses forehead ere the coffin lid is screwed down; in certain parts, indeed, it is incumbent on every one who sees a dead body to kiss it, otherwise he will get no peace for the dead.
IV
THE KISS OF PEACE
Salute invicem in osculo sancto.
Pauli Epist. ad Romanos, xvi. 16.