Love as It Was in the Time of Louis XIV

I

Thrice on the lips and twice on the eyes
I kiss you or ever I kiss your bosom.--
When love is young would you have it wise,
Wise as the world goes?--No! 'tis a blossom
Lovely and wise since it's lovely; content
To live or to die as its folly pleases:
Life is a rose and the rose's scent
Is love, that grows as the rose increases.

II

If I tell you the Marquis will die, will you smile?
And laugh when he's dead?--This powder, my lily,
That seems but an innocent sweet in this phial--
Do not touch it! breathe distant!--a poison Exili
Used a life to discover. Its formula left
To a pupil (well worthy the master!), the prudent
And pious Sainte Croix. Him, of teacher bereft,
The Devil, I deem, must have taken as student.

III

Quite a dealer in death. And ours was a case
That those difficult drugs of his laboratory
Demanded. I visited; found him; his face,
Bent over a sublimate,--safe from the hoary
Light particles,--masked with a mask of fine glass.
I told him your danger, Marie, and expounded
Our passion, despair, with many an "Alas!"
He smiled while a paste in a mortar he pounded.

IV

Three fistfuls of Louis!--"He'd do it," he said.--
A delicate dust, gum, liquid and metal
Crushed, crucibled.... "Stay! tie this mask on your head.
You see, but a grain on your rose's pink petal
Has shriveled and blasted it--look, how it dries!--
A perilous pulver ... could Satan make better?...
To mix with that present of perfumes--she dies,
And who is the wiser? Or, say in a letter

V

"To the husband of her who has smiled on you since
Another grows bald?"--And he poured in a bottle
The subtlety.--"Bah! be he beggar or prince,
If he kiss but the seal the venom will throttle."--
"Well," I thought, "I will test ere I risk." Slyly drew
My dagger; approached to the bandlet, that tightly
Supported his mask, its keen point.... It was true!--
When it cracked he fell dead; he but breathed of it lightly.

VI

Your letter is sealed and is sent. You are mine!--
By now he has broken the wax.... If there flutters
Some dust in his nostrils, who, who will divine
That thus it was poisoned?--Our alchemist utters
No word!--You are happy? and I?--Oh, I feel
That I love and am loved.--The tidings comes heavy
To-night to the King; you are there; you will reel--
Will faint!--Now away to the royal levee.