Love potion

“ First, the slow-working purple sort is verily cheap, but difficult of administration; for in water it is plainly visible and easy of discernment in tea. Whereas my patent potion, bringing love at first sight, closely resembleth the much-desired whisky. ”

“ Among love-potions made of herbs or of portions of the lower animals it is often difficult, or impossible, to estimate how far the virtue of the dose is conceived to be inherent in the {118} ingredients, and how far it is conferred by spells or other observances with which it is concocted. Sometimes the inherent virtue seems to preponderate; at other times the spell. ”

“ Returned with this potion, he makes the attempt, but so great is his desire to reach the goal quickly, that he will not slacken his speed to drink from the phial carried by his Love, but hastens forward, only to fall dead as he reaches the summit of the hill. ”

“ The poor creatures received the potion on their knees, and before they could be induced to swallow it, cast many a lingering look and last farewell on the beautiful world from which a small draught was about to separate them. ”

“ I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage drank off the potion.
The most racking pangs succeeded; a grinding in the 287 bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. ”

“ The idea itself seems a failure, and the best that might have come of it would have been very much below The Scarlet Letter or The House of the Seven Gables. The appeal to our interest is not felicitously made, and the fancy of a potion, to assure eternity of existence, being made from the flowers which spring from the grave of a man whom the distiller of the potion has deprived of life, though it might figure with advantage in a short story of the pattern of the Twice-Told Tales, appears too slender to carry the weight of a novel. ”

“ Nay, some, scared and daunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon their eyes at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful to save than the agony and travail of Nature to destroy. To the unprepared the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe,—one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy courage falter? ”

“ A charming poem on perfumes classifies them, rousing ideas, sensations, and memories. Some are fresh, like the flesh of an infant, green like the fields in spring, recalling the blush of dawn and carrying with them the thoughts of innocence. Others, like musk, amber, benzoin, nard, and incense, are superb, triumphant, worldly, and provoke coquetry, love, luxury, festivities, and splendours. If one transposed them into the sphere of colours, they would represent gold and purple. The poet often recurs to this idea of the significance of perfumes. ”

“ Cold, miserable, in an agony of fear, his nervousness doubled by the opium and by a need of food of which he was not aware, there was but one remedy within his reach. The sleeping potion had been calculated for one occasion only, and it was all gone. He tried to drain a few drops from the phial, and a drowsy, half-sickening odour rose from it to his nostrils. But there was nothing left, nothing but the brandy, and little more than half a bottle of that. ”

“ It was the effect of the great heat. You never think of putting on your hat when you go in the garden. Yet madame votre mère gave you so many cautions about it.”
Zéphyrine entered, asked about me with much interest and made me promise to take another spoonful of my soothing potion.
“Very well,” said I, although I had no recollection of this potion, “a sick guest is an inconvenience and all I ask is to get well quickly.”
The potion really did me a great deal of good, for I again fell asleep and dreamed of my immortal nymph. ”

“ I then turned my attention to a receiver, connected by a worm with an alembic on the furnace. On examining it, I found it contained a small quantity of a bright transparent liquid, which, poured forth into a glass, emitted precisely the same odour as the phial. Persuaded this must be the draught of immortality, I raised it to my lips; but apprehension lest it might be poison stayed my hand. Reassured, however, by the thought of the young man's miraculous recovery, I quaffed the potion. ”

“ Then dropping some colourless fluid into them, one after the other, a precipitate fell down in all, in clouds of the brightest tints, but each different.
‘See how completely these dull minerals do my bidding,’ he exclaimed. ‘To you the potion offers no trace by which its nature could be told; to me there is not an atom suspended in it, in its invisible but imperishable form, which cannot be reproduced before our eyes. ”

“ Which lies in the hearts of carnations and roses,
That unexplained something by men called perfume.
Though modest the flower, yet great is its power
And pregnant with meaning each pistil and leaf,
If only it hides there, if only abides there,
The fragrance suggestive of love, joy, and grief.
Not always the air that a master composes
Can stir human heart-strings with pleasure or pain.
But strange, subtle chords, like the scent of the roses,
Breathe out of some measures, though simple the strain. ”

“ Thou art musk, frankincense, amomum, stephanotis,
Thou art the fragrant wine, the paradisal lotus,
Thou art the opium.
Hashsheesh nor opium are worth not thy caresses,
Sweeter than opium to still the spirit's drouth
Thine unassuaged mouth;
Him that hath known thy love no mortal grief distresses;
Sweeter thy kisses are than incense which oppresses
The breezes of the South.... ”

“ If one wished to cause a satiated lover to return, the old woman rolled a bronze ball which she carried in her bosom, asking Venus to cause the lover to roll in over the threshold of the door in the same manner, and if the conjury produced no effect, the wax image of the person beloved was thrown into the brazier while asking the gods to melt the frozen heart with love even as the figure melted. With these enchantments, accompanied by mysterious invocations, went philters composed of aphrodisiacs and exciting herbs, which frequently led to death. ”

“ The effect of the potion on a person in full health is very different; it stimulates and excites, and is altogether prejudicial; and although it would rather do good than harm to a weakly person, its great virtues are only shown when taken by a man in his last moments. ”

“ Some fatal obstinacy, however, got possession of me, and I persisted in the resolution of concealing one thing. We become fondly attached to objects and pursuits, frequently for no conceivable reason but the pain and trouble they cost us. In proportion to the danger in which they involve us do we cherish them. Our darling potion is the poison that scorches our vitals.
After some time, I went to Ludloe's apartment. ”

“ Here glowing hyacinths, and tulips, and roses, lift their fair heads; and their perfumes, in loveliest sound, call to the happy youth: "Wander, wander among us, our beloved; for thou understandest us! Our perfume is the Longing of Love; we love thee, and are thine forevermore!" The golden rays burn in glowing tones: "We are Fire, kindled by Love. Perfume is Longing; but Fire is Desire: and dwell we not in thy bosom? We are thy own!" The dark bushes, the high trees, rustle and sound: "Come to us, thou loved, thou happy one! Fire is Desire; but Hope is our cool Shadow. ”

“ In order, therefore, to keep life and hope awhile unextinguished, if perchance they could be prolonged until the dawning of day, raising the dying child in her arms, she gave him a few drops of that potion, which, has the power of subduing and even suspending for a time the operations of nature. ”

“ Choosing a warm and perfect day in the very prime of the season's glow, distilling as she goes some intoxicating aroma—impalpable to our grosser senses—a perfume of love that drives every drone of the hives in passionate ardour to that deadly encounter, to which only he may obtain who can follow her arrowy course into the blue, where, out of sight of our feeble eyes, that one lethal embrace occurs after which the lover comes hurtling from the skies, dead and eviscerated. ”

“ According to Pliny, "if the leaves and flowers of the borage be immersed in wine, and that wine drunken, the potion will make men blithe and merry, and drive away all heavy sadness and dull melancholy." ”

“ It is unnecessary to mention the variety of charms which she possessed for that obsolete malady the colic, the toothache, headache, or for removing warts, and taking motes out of the eyes; let it suffice to inform our readers that she was well stocked with them; and that, in addition to this, she, together with her husband, drank a potion made up and administered by an herb-doctor, for preventing forever the slightest misunderstanding or quarrel between man and wife. ”

“ Perhaps all this fine fragrance is but the overflow of its soul’s delight at being young and chastely beautiful, and trembling in the ultra violet darkness on that delicious verge of life that waits the wooer. I half fancy that this is true of all perfume of flowers, that it is less a call to butterfly or bee to come to their winning than it is a radiation of delight from their own pure hearts at the dawning of the full joy of living. ”

“ Naturally the potion differs according to the kind of animal into which a man is temporarily converted. It would be absurd, for example, to expect that the dose which turns you into an elephant should also be able to turn you into a crocodile ”

“ Ointment being smooth oil, do you not think that it is calculated to render noble manners effeminate? Certainly. And as we have abandoned luxury in taste, so certainly do we renounce voluptuousness in sights and odours; lest through the senses, as through unwatched doors, we unconsciously give access into the soul to that excess which we have driven away. If, then, we say that the Lord the great High Priest offers to God the incense of sweet fragrance, let us not imagine that this is a sacrifice and sweet fragrance of incense ”

“ Although Theocritus had declared that neither ointment nor powder is of any efficacy for the cure of love, several of the ancient writers on medicine have given directions for the treatment of desponding lovers. ”

“ Being a most delightful Powder, which incomparably scents Handkerchiefs, Gloves, and all Sorts of Linnen, making them smell most deliciously oderiferous, fine and charming; it perfumes the Hands, the Hair of the Head, and Periwigs most delicately, also all Manner of Cloaths, Beds, Rooms, Scrutores, Presses, Drawers, Boxes, and all other Things, giving them a most admirable, pleasant and durable Scent, which is so curiously fragrant, so delectably sweet, reviving and enlivening, that no Perfume or Aromatick in the World, can possibly come near it ”

“ Legend and amulet, mummy and wax-figure, herb and stone, drug and elixir, incense and ointment, are all but the means, which the strong will of the gifted Master uses in order to influence and finally to control the weaker mind. Thus powerful perfumes, narcotic odors, and anæsthetic salves are employed to produce enervation and often actual and complete loss of self-control; in other cases the neophyte has to turn round and round within the magic circle, from east to west, till he becomes giddy and utterly exhausted. ”

“ See “Katapotia.”
Poison is the same word as “potion.” Both originally meant a draught.
Polychrest. A medicine of many virtues,
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Pomatum. Originally an ointment made from the pulp of apples, lard and rose water, and used as an application for beautifying the face.
Populeum. An ointment made from the buds of the black poplar. It was prescribed by Nicolas of Salermo as a narcotic and resolvent application.
Poultice, from the Latin “puls (pult-) ” through the Italian “polta,” meaning pap, pottage, pulse. “Poltos” was the Greek term for pottage. ”

“ In love, it denotes great pleasure in the enjoyment of the beloved object. It promises a handsome wife, a good husband, and beautiful children. Pomegranates.—To dream of pomegranates, foretells some very unexpected legacy, by which you will be enabled to make a fortune. They denote that your sweetheart is of good temper, sings well, and is very faithful. To the married, they show an increase of riches and children, and great success in trade. ”

“ Another charm, which is highly regarded, directs the wife to cut off a few hairs from both her own and her husband's head, to burn them together and from their ashes make a potion which the husband is to be caused, clandestinely, to drink. ”

“ The sleeping potion (in other fairy tales it is a sleep-thorn) plays, in the same connection as here, an important rôle in fairy tales, rarely in other significance, that is without dependence upon a sexual wish-structure. The being neglected for another, a rival, is here symbolically indicated in this manner, bearing throughout a character of dream origin. Through some means the spell is finally broken and the prince again recognizes the spurned bride by his side. ”

“ Worn in the breast of many a shepherd lass."
In England the marigold, which is carefully excluded from the flowers with which German maidens tell their fortunes as unfavourable to love, is often used for divination, and in Germany the star-flower and dandelion.
Among some of the ordinary flowers in use for love-divination may be mentioned the poppy, with its "prophetic leaf," and the old-fashioned "bachelor's buttons," which was credited with possessing some magical effect upon the fortunes of lovers. ”