Remembrance of Things Past

[Mopkins]

It's bliss to kiss her lips like this;
to kiss these lips is bliss.
The dangerous hint of her scarlet tint,(dangerous hint doesn’t make sense to me)
in these vernal days, I miss.(you’ve gone from present tense kissing, to referring to it as past , you now miss it– bit confusing , the first two lines should also be past tense to go with the rest – maybe something like ‘’twas bliss to kiss her lips like this,/to kiss those lips was bliss’))

With her winks and her smiles she enthrals and beguiles;
she ensnares with those winks and those smiles.
In the days when I dream, by a turbulent stream,(‘by a turbulent stream ‘seems odd – like it’s just thrown in for the rhyme)
I pretend she'll be mine 'til I die.

But she dances and flirts; with her lies she hurts:
she hurts with her dances and flirts.
Her devil-red tint left so many hints
that our kiss would never return. ( this doesn’t make sense to me, maybe something like ‘that my love she’d never return’ )


I miss the bliss of that distant kiss;
to kiss those lips was bliss.
But why would you( choose) to love and to lose
when the loss is so sore as this? (so seems wrong, I’d use ‘as’)

I liked the internal rhyming, the poem galloped along quite nicely. Apart from the tense problem in the first stanza, and the other things I pointed out, I can’t see much wrong with it. I liked “with her winks and her smiles she enthrals and beguiles’ – for me that was the best line.

Thanks for the read, Marianne