ROMEO:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO:
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET:
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO:
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET:
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO:
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
The devotional references in this dialogue are really neat..."let lips do what hands do"...and "move not, while my prayer's effect I take"...it's so witty and awe-struck. I always think of the prayer position as hands together at heart center- fingers extended, more like yoga's Anjali Mudra, than with fingers linked together, but in this poem the visual of pursed lips and interlocked hands and fingers brings the forward moving energy of Romeo towards Juliet. To interlock, to share, to be entwined...the last line makes me smile- OK, WAIT, while my love towards you gets heard by the gods and then comes back down to make you love me back. If only!!!
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