Chemist To His Love, The

By Unknown

I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me, Our mutual flame is like th' affinity That doth exist between two simple bodies: I am Potassium to thine Oxygen. 'Tis little that the holy marriage vow Shall shortly make us one. That unity Is, after all, but metaphysical. Oh, would that I, my Mary, were an acid, A living acid; thou an alkali Endow'd with human sense, that, brought together, We both might coalesce into one salt, One homogeneous crystal. Oh, that thou Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen; We would unite to form olefiant gas, Or common coal, or naphtha, would to heaven That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime! And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret. I'd be content to be Sulphuric Acid, So that thou might be Soda. In that case We should be Glauber's Salt. Wert thou Magnesia Instead we'd form the salt that's named from Epsom. Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aqua-fortis, Our happy union should that compound form, Nitrate of Potash--otherwise Saltpetre. And thus our several natures sweetly blent, We'd live and love together, until death Should decompose the fleshly tertium quid, Leaving our souls to all eternity Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Briggs And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs?