I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me, Our mutual flame is like the affinity That doth exist between two simple bodies. I am Potassium to thy 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 Endowed 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 mightst 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 Aquafortis, 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 this 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? We will! the day, the happy day is nigh, When Johnson shall with beauteous Briggs combine. THE ANATOMIST TO HIS DULCINEA. I list as thy heart and ascending aorta Their volumes of valvular harmony pour; And my soul from that muscular music has caught a New life ’mid its dry anatomical lore. Oh, rare is the sound when thy ventricles throb In a systolic symphony measured and slow, When the auricles answer with rhythmical sob, As they murmur a melody wondrously low! Oh, thy cornea, love, has the radiant light Of the sparkle that laughs in the icicle’s sheen; And thy crystalline lens, like a diamond bright, Through the quivering frame of thine iris is seen! And thy retina, spreading its lustre of pearl, Like the far-away nebula, distantly gleams From a vault of black cellular mirrors that hurl From their hexagon angles the silvery beams. Ah! the flash of those orbs is enslaving me still, As they roll ’neath the palpebræ, dimly translucent, Obeying in silence the magical will Of the oculo-motor—pathetic—abducent.