Ad Manus Puellae

I was always a lover of ladies' hands!     Or ever mine heart came here to tryst,     For the sake of your carved white hands' commands;     The tapering fingers, the dainty wrist;     The hands of a girl were what I kissed.     I remember an hand like a fleur-de-lys     When it slid from its silken sheath, her glove;     With its odours passing ambergris:     And that was the empty husk of a love.     Oh, how shall I kiss your hands enough?     They are pale with the pallor of ivories;     But they blush to the tips like a curled sea-shell:     What treasure, in kingly treasuries,     Of gold, and spice for the thurible,     Is sweet as her hands to hoard and tell?     I know not the way from your finger-tips,     Nor how I shall gain the higher lands,     The citadel of your sacred lips:     I am captive still of my pleasant bands,     The hands of a girl, and most your hands.