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