Page:Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, t. II.djvu/151

 and the heavily-laden anther has sturdily shaken forth the seed that clogged it; and then they feel as our first parents did, when dewy sleep

'Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play.'

The body.then so delightfully light seems to rest on 'earth's freshest, softest lap,' and the slothful yet half-awakened mind broods over its slumbering shell.

"The second, kindled in the head,

'bred of unkindly fumes,'

is the lechery of senility—a morbid craving, like the hunger of surfeited gluttony. The senses, like Messalina,

'lassata sed non satiata,'

ever tingling, keep hankering after the impossible. The spermatic ejaculations, far from calming the body, only irritate it, for the exciting influence of a salacious fancy continues after the anther has yielded all its seed. Even if acrid blood comes instead of the balmy, cream-like fluid, it brings with it nothing but a painful irritation. If, unlike as in styriasis, an erection does not take place, and the phallus remains limp