"Don Juan, Canto II" by Lord Byron

stanza 186, part of stanza 187

They were alone, yet not alone as they

Who shut in chambers think it loneliness;

The silent ocean, and the starlight bay,

The twilight glow, which momently grew less,

The voiceless sands, and dropping caves, that lay

Around them, made them to each other press,

As if there were no life beneath the sky

Save theirs, and that their life could never die.

A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love,

And beauty, all concentrating like rays Into one focus, kindled from above;

Such kisses as belong to early days,

When heart, and soul, and sense, in concert move,

And the blood’s lava, and the pulse a blaze,

Each kiss a heart-quake—for a kiss’s strength I think, it must be reckoned by its length.