The Anatomy of Melancholy

While I kiss my girl With half-parted lips, My soul, sick and wounded, Rushes up to my lips.

The soul itself is moved: “Now their lips were sounding with many kisses, mingling their souls too, breathing them out in their mutual embraces.”

We clung together, burning, And poured through our lips, to and fro, Our wandering souls. Farewell, cares.

They breathe out their souls and spirits along with their kisses, says Baldassare Castiglione, exchange hearts and spirits and mingle affections as they do kisses: it is a union of mind more than of body. Although these kisses are delightful and pleasant—ambrosial kisses, “a little kiss sweeter than sweet ambrosia,” such as Ganymede gave Jupiter, “sweeter than nectar,” sweeter than nectar, balsam or honey, “kisses dripping pure love,” love-dropping kisses; for

Neither gillyflower nor rose is as sweet As sugared kisses when lovers meet.

Yet they leave a bitter aftertaste, like aloes or gall—

So that for me that little kiss had changed from ambrosia To something bitterer than bitter hellebore.

At first ambrosia itself was no sweeter; At last black hellebore was not so bitter.

They are deceitful kisses—

Why do you entwine me in your soft arms? Why lure me with deceitful kisses? And so on.

Why enfold me in your arms And trap me with false kisses?

They are destructive, and the more of them, the worse—

And she gave a thousand kisses that undo me.

They are the ruin of these miserable lovers. There are virtuous kisses, I do not deny it: “the kiss of charity,” friendly kisses, modest kisses, Vestal-virgin kisses, courteous and ceremonial kisses, and so on. “The touch of a kiss, the embrace of arms”: kissing and embracing are nature’s particular gifts to humankind. But these kisses are too lascivious—

And she wound her arms around my neck, and so on.

Too prolonged and too violent: “Ivy cannot outdo their arms, nor shellfish their kisses.” They cling like ivy, shut close as an oyster, bill like doves: prostitutes’ kisses, with lip-biting and “additions.” “With mouths pressed so close,” says Lucian, “that they can hardly draw their lips apart, nibbling as they kiss, opening their mouths too and touching breasts,” and so on; such kisses as she gave Giton: “seizing him by the neck, she gave innumerable kisses to the unresisting boy”—innumerable kisses, and so on. More than kisses, or kisses too familiar, like those he mentioned: “to receive seven kisses from Venus herself,” and so on, with the other obscenities foolish lovers practise, which are abominable and pernicious.