Love & Passion Quote by Robert Herrick

A kiss becomes architecture in Herrick's hands: not a fluttery symbol but a binding agent, the wet, ordinary chemistry that turns romance from idea into structure. Calling it "cement, glue, and lime" is almost comically material for a love lyric, and that's the point. He pulls intimacy down from the clouds and plants it in the workshop, where affection is made, tested, and held together by friction and adhesion. The phrase "sure, sweet" fuses reliability with pleasure: the kiss is both warranty and reward, proof that desire has substance.

The sly hinge is "as some approve". Herrick signals that even this supposedly natural act needs an audience and a verdict. It's a wink at the social policing of touch in a 17th-century world where courtship, chastity, and reputation were public property. A kiss isn't just private heat; it's a risky credential, something you grant or withhold under cultural surveillance. By nodding to "some" who approve, Herrick admits the tribunal exists, then politely ignores it, treating the kiss as the real authority.

Context matters: Herrick, a Cavalier poet, specialized in carpe diem sensuality polished into song. His metaphors often dress bodily appetite in elegant craft, letting pleasure pass as artistry. Here, the intent feels twofold: celebrate the kiss as love's decisive act, and smuggle erotic immediacy past moral gatekeepers by framing it as necessary "cement" rather than indulgence. Love, he implies, doesn't hold without contact.