Page:The art of kissing (IA artofkissing987wood).djvu/42

 are afflicted with all the morbidities of ingrowing love, which is quite as unnatural and painful as an ingrowing toenail. If man or woman is so unfortunate as never to be approached in love, or as not to find a woman or man who will reciprocate to his or her approaches, why, that is as unfortunate as the lot of the eagle, caged matelessly away from the sky. But such cases are so rare as to be almost negligible. If you want to love, you can, and you can find somewhere your adequate mate. And when the mate is found, and the love rapture grows like the crescent moon toward its full, you will discover the complete kiss, and the ineffable delight that it brings. This is the time to forget all false reticences, all teachings that thus and so is not done by nice people, and all the rest of the shoddy that masquerades as truth. It is love's hour, and your share in it is to yield yourself wholly to the golden spell whose physical rapture is the crest of man's physical existence. In one of the Eagle Sonnets, the lover sings:

And then the transition:

In this high mood of utter giving and receiving, love at its finest comes, and stays, if the lovers have chosen well.