 the way up, till it was at the end of its penetration, sending
up, through my eyes, the sparks of the love-fire that ran all over me and blaz'd
in every vein and every pore of me: a system incarnate of joy all over.
    I had now totally taken in love's true arrow from the point up to the
feather, in that part, where making no new wound, the lips of the original one
of nature, which had owed its first breathing to this dear instrument, clung, as
if sensible of gratitude, in eager suction round it, whilst all its inwards
embrac'd it tenderly with a warmth of gust, a compressive energy, that gave it,
in its way, the heartiest welcome in nature; every fibre there gathering tight
round it, and straining ambitiously to come in for its share of the blissful
touch.
    As we were giving them a few moments of pause to the delectation of the
senses, in dwelling with the highest relish on this intimatest point of
re-union, and chewing the cud of enjoyment, the impatience natural to the
pleasure soon drove us into action. Then began the driving tumult on his side,
and the responsive heaves on mine, which kept me up to him; whilst, as our joys
grew too great for utterance, the organs of our voices, voluptuously
intermixing, became organs of the touch ... and oh, that touch! how delicious!
... how poignantly luscious! ... And now! now I felt to the heart of me! I felt
the prodigious keen edge with which love, presiding over this act, points the
pleasure: love! that may be styled the Attic salt of enjoyment; and indeed,
without it, the joy, great as it is, is still a vulgar one, whether in a king or
a beggar; for it is, undoubtedly, love alone that refines, ennobles and exalts
it.
    Thus happy, then, by the heart, happy by the senses, it was beyond all
power, even of thought, to form the conception of a greater delight than what I
was now consummating the fruition of.
    Charles, whose whole frame was convulsed with the agitation of his rapture,
whilst the tenderest fires trembled in his eyes, all assured me of a perfect
concord of joy, penetrated me so profoundly, touch'd me so vitally, took me so
much out of my own possession, whilst he seem'd himself so much in mine, that in
a delicious enthusiasm, I imagin'd such a
