La bocca piccioletta e colorita,
Vermiglia come rosa di giardino,
Piagente ed amorosa per baciare.[3]
This last simile is one of the most frequently employed. The beloved one’s mouth is likened to a rose; it has the scent and colour of a rose:
Hæc dulcis in amore
Est et plena decore,
Rosa rubet rubore,
Et lilium convallium
Tota vincit odore,
sang the wandering clerks in the Middle Ages, the jolly Goliards, and they extolled the youth who was lucky enough to kiss the mouth of such a woman:
Felix est qui osculis mellifluis
Ipsius potitur.
And, they went on to say, “on every maiden’s lips the kiss sits like a rose which only longs to be plucked”:
Sedit in ore
Rosa cum pudore.
The old German minnesingers use the expression Küssblümlein (kiss-floweret), and a bard of the Netherlands sings: “My beloved is my summer, my beloved is my joy, all the roses bloom every time she gives me a kiss”:
Mijn liefken is mijn somer,
Min liefken is mijn lust,
En al de rosen bloejen
So dicmael si mi cust.
But all this is only poetry, merely feeble imageries which only give an entirely weak idea of the reality. How accurate is Thomas Moore when, in one of his poems, he declares that roses are not so warm as his beloved’s mouth, nor can the dew approach it in sweetness.