Jenny Kissed Me

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I'm growing old, but add-
Jenny kissed me!

-James Henry Leigh Hunt

I have always loved this poem. In a novel way, the poet presents his golden memory of Jenny kissing him.

By the lines, ‘Jumping from the chair she sat in,’ the poet probably wants to say that Jenny was so happy to see him that she jumped from her chair she sat comfortably in, to kiss him instead of just sitting there and extending her hand for a simple kiss. The poet is perhaps insinuating the eagerness to kiss from both sides- an early sign of two people falling in love.

The poet is unruffled by the vagaries of life and weariness of his mind or body. He is equally unrepentant of missing health and wealth in life. All that matters to him is that Jenny kissed him. He was worthy of Jenny’s kiss- probably her love. The poet is so much riveted in the golden moment of his past that he is blaming time for snatching that moment of his life from him.

A totally different interpretation could be that though the poet was not in love with Jenny but she was so undeniably beautiful that he always sees that kiss from Jenny as his moment of glory, his achievement.

I will sign off with a quote from G.B. Shaw:

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

Adios