The First Kiss of Love
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
(composed: 1805 or 1806)
(From Hours of Idleness - 1807)
1
- Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,
- Those tissues of 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.
2
- Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with phantasy glow,
- Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove;
- From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,
- Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love!
3
- If Apollo should eer his assistance refuse,
- Or the Nine be disposed from your service to rove,
- Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the muse,
- And try the effect of the first kiss of love.
4
- I hate you, ye cold compositions of art!
- Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove,
- I court the effusions that spring from the heart,
- Which throbs with delight to the first kiss of love.
5
- Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes,
- Perhaps 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.
6
- Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,
- From Adam till now, has with wretchedness strove;
- Some portion of paradise still is on earth,
- And Eden revives in the first kiss of love.
7
- When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past
- For years fleet away with the wings of the dove
- The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
- Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.
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