The Kiss
Are you shaken, are you stirred
By a whisper of love,
Spellbound to a word
Does Time cease to move,
Till her calm grey eye
Expands to a sky
And the clouds of her hair
Like storms go by?
Then the lips that you have kissed
Turn to frost and fire,
And a white-steaming mist
Obscures desire:
So back to their birth
Here Graves steps into what happens when two people break up. The lips become “frost and fire” meaning that the words that issue from them are meant to harm and hurt, as if the two people got into a fight and left one another.