In addition to Romeo's remarks above, as he first encounters Juliet, he speaks to her in a religious metaphor in the first quatrain of a sonnet that conveys the theme of Romantic love:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
First, Romeo adresses Juliet with the metaphor "This holy shrine," and personifies his lips as two "holy pilgrims" that wish to worship the shrine by touching and kissing. Juliet demurs, thinking his advances too strong; she suggests that the pilgrims' hands can also touch the saints' shrines, and such a touch is equal to a kiss. Undeterred, Romeo then calls Juliet "dear saint" and asks her if he can do what pilgrims' lips do in prayer, and he steals a kiss. Then, in a final metaphor, Romeo suggests another kiss that, by her kiss, his "sin is purged,'' thus continuing the metaphor of a saint who can obtain for a person the forgiveness of sin.
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