The First Kiss Of Love: vol. 2

Away with your fictions of flimsy romance

Those tissues falsehood which folly has wove!

Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance

Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with phantasy glow

Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove

From what blest inpiration your sonnets would flow

Could you ever have tasted first kiss of love!

If Apollo should e'er his assistance refuse

Or the Nine be desposed from your service to rove

Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the muse

And try the effect first kiss of love

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art!

Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove

I court effusions that spring from the heart

Which throbes with delight to the first kiss of love

Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes

Perhapes may amuse, yet they never can move

Arcadia displays but a region of dreams

What are visions like these to the first kiss of love?

Oh! cease affirm that man, since his birth

From Adam till now, has with wretchedness strove

Some portion paradise still is on earth

And Eden revives in the first kiss of love

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past

For years fleet away with the wings of the dove

The dearest rememberance will still be the last

Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love