Tall and fair and azure-eyed,
Covert glances ’neath the drooping lash
Like Cupid’s arrows in an artful quiver—
She is this and much beside,
Which to tell in detail would be rash
By any but the beggar to the giver.
If I gathered, if she gave,
I could put it better into art,
By countless little charming things elated—
Silken tresses in a wave,
Cheek with stolen pigment from the heart,
And mouth the most inviting e’er created.
Still I’m short of total truth
Just to feature forth her lovely face
Wreathed in rebel-locked or coiffured limbus;
Yet the highest charm of youth
Is the soft inimitable grace
That bathes a woman with a glowing nimbus.
And this my goddess hath improved
By every feminine instinct of taste,
And still the deeper charm of spiritism—
Which, if it were the soul and loved
Some kindred soul in this world of love-waste,
Would laugh at every selfish catechism
Of worldly wisdom and its creed
And tremble to the fate which love revealed,
Flushed at its glimpse of Paradise, delirious
That life was not all craft and greed
But underneath its shallows half-concealed
Lay passion grand, transfiguring, imperious!