DEMETRIUS (Wakes.) O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine,
To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?
Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show
Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!
That pure congealed white, high Taurus’ snow,
Fanned with the eastern wind, turns to a crow
When thou hold’st up thy hand. O let me kiss
This impress of pure white, this seal of bliss! (3.2.127-144)
Lysander and Helena have been speaking in couplets—as most of the lovers’ exchanges are—but Lysander’s final line is unanswered, as if Helena realises that she has no comeback to Lysander’s taunting reminder that Demetrius loves Hermia, not her. But then Demetrius wakes and straight away, there’s a ridiculous tumble of nouns and adjectives: O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine. WOW, you’re AMAZING! WOW! (And his addressing her as Helen links her with Helen of Troy, here especially.) To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? He’s using a perfectly acceptable plural form, rather than eyes, albeit archaic, but it adds to the sense of ridiculous, over the top artifice. Your eyes, they’re AMAZING, beyond compare, all those conventional poetic devices; in comparison with the brightness of your eyes, crystal, the brightest thing, is muddy. Then his eyes drift down: O, how ripe in show thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow! Your mouth, it’s kissable, delicious; he’s lingering, imagining. (Much more conventional, to the point of silliness, than Romeo’s two blushing pilgrims.) I want to kiss you! Then Demetrius’s gaze shifts focus even lower—or perhaps Helena’s got her hand over her mouth in shock, amazement—delight?—and he describes the whiteness of her hand; that pure congealed white, high Taurus’ snow, fanned with the eastern wind, turns to a crow when thou hold’st up thy hand. In comparison with the whiteness of your hand, the purest, most hard-compacted snow—like that on the highest mountains of Asia Minor—would look dark. (It’s conventional, but compare the delicate, precise sensuality of Juliet’s imagining Romeo’s light in darkness as whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back.) And the repeated ‘o’ rhyme across two couplets makes it all the more intense: o, o, o, o! But mostly—like Romeo—what Demetrius now wants to do is kiss Helena, just her hand—for now? O let me kiss this impress of pure white, this seal of bliss! Perhaps she’s now warding him off, backing away in horrified disbelief??
