I list as thy heart and ascending aorta,

Their volumes of valvular harmony pour,

And my soul from that muscular music has caught

New life ‘mid its dry anatomical lore.

‍

O rare is the sound when the ventricles throb;

In a systolic symphony, measured and slow,

While the auricle answers with rhythmical sob

As it murmurs a melody wondrously low.

‍

Ah! thy cornea, love, has the radiant light,

Of the sparkle that laughs in a icicle’s sheen;

And thy crystalline lens, like a diamond bright,

Thro’ the quivering frame of thy iris is seen!

‍

And thy retina, spreading its lustre of pearl,

Like a far-away nebula, distantly gleams.

From a vault of black cellular mirrors that hurl

From their hexagon angles the silvery beams.

‍

Ah! the flash of those orbs is enslaving me still,

As they roll ‘neath the palperbrae dimly translucent,

Obeying, in silencee, the magical will

Of the oculi motor, trochlear, abducent.

‍

Sweet is thy voice as it sighingly swells

From thy dainty quivering chordæ vocales,

Or rings in clear tones thro’ the echoing cells

Of the antrum, the ethmoid, and sinus frontales.

‍

And stately the heave of thy maidenly breast

As the swell of the billow swift rolling to land,

And as soft the vesicular sigh in thy chest

As the moan of the ripple that ebbs o’er the sand.

‍

But, alas, with many forebodings I pen

Anatomical verses, thy beauty to praise,

For I fear me my studies will never again

Bring the solace thy had in my happier days.

‍

–“89”, in The Speculum.