This is one of the high-points (if they can be called that) of Goethe’s brilliantly contrived sardonic humor. The shift in subject matter is jolting enough, but what makes this passage particularly ironic is that Mephistopheles’s tone hardly changes at all. The final line’s second clause is a smack in Martha’s face, and the fact that it’s punctuated with a feminine rhyme makes it all the worse because of the nursery-rhyme effect that it creates.

But this provokes the question: Why did Goethe choose to characterize Mephistopheles like this? One possible answer could have to do with his position as a negation to all the positive things that God does. But this also illustrates the cutting nature of humor when used in certain contexts.

These first lines provide a setting for the rest of the poem, but this physical description will only return with the poem’s conclusion and the actual kiss. Although these lines are written in the first person, they function as an outsider’s perspective on what’s actually happening. The speaker doesn’t go through any great trouble to kiss the beloved, and they also don’t seem entirely too eager to kiss either: The speaker only hopes “that she, / Might give her lips to me.”

But in the following stanzas, the speaker reveals that this kiss actually carries divine significance that affects the very “heart” of the beloved. And in light of the ritualistic diction in the final stanza (“Her mouth for immolation / Was ripe, and mine the art;”), these simple actions can be seen as preparation for a sort of religious sacrifice.

At last, the speaker introduces the beloved to the “secret knowledge / Of passion’s least intent.” The entire poem builds to the actual kiss itself described here, first characterizing both the speaker and the beloved so that the full significance of this kiss can be appreciated.

The physical kiss is given such power in this poem that it affects the very “heart” of the beloved. And this “heart” is more than just a metaphor for the beloved’s emotions. Rather, the kiss carries the weight of a religious ritual, and we’re left unsure of the extent to which the religious analogy that dominates this poem should be read as a metaphor or taken to have literal significance.

Think about that next time you kiss someone!

These lines forcefully bring together the erotic with the divine as Sappho finally addresses the kiss itself. The beloved’s mouth is described in terms of food: it was “ripe” for “immolation,” a word normally used to describe burning an animal as a sacrifice, and derived from the latin word for the salted flour (“mola”) that would be sprinkled on animals prior to their sacrifice.

While the beloved’s mouth serves as the sacrifice, the speaker (our “enamored priestess”) supplies the “art” of the sacrifice since the speaker is presumably more experienced.

While the second stanza characterized the beloved as a goddess, the third develops the paradox of the beloved also being entirely innocent and unaware of “passion’s least intent,” despite the power she has over the speaker.