hortus conclusus

For our next adventure in sinaesthesia, I bring you something a little less cheerful and a lot more romantic. Here is the first version of Keats' famous poem of enchantment and perdition, La Belle Dame Sans Merci: Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing. Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel's granary is full, And the harvest's done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful - a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan. I set her

I have just discovered this very sexy scent. This is a bedroom scent for the sexually explorative new millennium. It is, to my nose, a gourmand floriental, but it is also a skin scent; it enhances the smells we make naturally after a night of...enthusiastic sex. It opens up with a subtly indolic floral accord, but the cumin is there under the surface, and one's the wheels of the imagination start whirring, to say the least. All--and I mean all--the human secretions are alluded to here in this perfume, but just made more intense in generally good ways. It is nasty, yet not too dirty, and very suggestive. The drydown is lovely, and the cumin really shines in conjunction with the musk/patchouli/cedar. Clean yet sweaty and, yes, a bit dirty. Brilliant art, though definitely not for everyone. And as strong as an EDP it is not, despite its name.