Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/87

 That with my tongue I felt them and could taste The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist! That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat Thy breasts like honey."

Dr. Donne, however, had anticipated him in the same vein:—

As the sweet sweat of roses in a still, As that, which from chaf'd muskats' pores doth trill, As the almighty balm of the early east, Such are the sweat drops of my mistress' breast; And on her neck her skin such lustre sets, They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets."

These poets ever delight in the strangest and most far-fetched comparisons. Cleveland has a magnificent comparison of the sun to a coal-pit; but Rossetti, twenty times more cunning and subtle, sees that "vows" are the merest bricks:—

"We strove To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home Which memory haunts." (Page 208.)

Cowley compares his heart to a hand-grenado; in a similar spirit, Rossetti compares the Soul to a town, and (bent to hunt the simile to death) tells us that there are by-streets there, and that Hopes go about hunting for adventures at the public-houses!—

So through that soul in restless brotherhood, They roam together now, and wind among It's bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns!" (Page 231.)

Dr. John Donne is great on Tears: they are at one time "globes, nay worlds," containing their "Europe, Asia, and Africa;" and at another they are "wine," bottled "in crystal vials" for the tipple of lovers. Mr. Rossetti, in a semi-military spirit, thus describes a Moan:—