Offering Perfume

In a forested glade, ritual incenses smolder softly as an altar is laid with offertory fruits, honeycakes, spiced ale, and glowing beeswax candles. Even she whose handmaiden was Love--to whomAt kissing times across her stateliest bedKings bowed themselves and shedPale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;Even she between whose lips the kiss becameAs fire and frankincense;Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence. from A Ballad of Death by Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1866 Art: Fall (The Seasons) by Alphonse Mucha, 1897