Chemist To His Love, The

I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me,     Our mutual flame is like th' affinity     That doth exist between two simple bodies:     I am Potassium to thine Oxygen.     'Tis little that the holy marriage vow     Shall shortly make us one. That unity     Is, after all, but metaphysical.     Oh, would that I, my Mary, were an acid,     A living acid; thou an alkali     Endow'd with human sense, that, brought together,     We both might coalesce into one salt,     One homogeneous crystal. Oh, that thou     Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen;     We would unite to form olefiant gas,     Or common coal, or naphtha, would to heaven     That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime!     And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret.     I'd be content to be Sulphuric Acid,     So that thou might be Soda. In that case     We should be Glauber's Salt. Wert thou Magnesia     Instead we'd form the salt that's named from Epsom.     Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aqua-fortis,     Our happy union should that compound form,     Nitrate of Potash--otherwise Saltpetre.     And thus our several natures sweetly blent,     We'd live and love together, until death     Should decompose the fleshly tertium quid,     Leaving our souls to all eternity     Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Briggs     And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we     Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs?