There is a vision in the heart of each
Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness
To wrong and pain, and knowledge of its cure:
And these embodied in a woman's form
That best transmits them, pure as first received,
From God above her, to mankind below.
_Colombe's Birthday._
This woman ...
... Being true, devoted, constant--she
Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain
And easy commonplace of character.
_The Inn Album._
... The good and tender heart,
Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,
How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,
How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free
As light where friends are--how imbued with lore
The world most prizes, yet the simplest.
* * * * *
Herself creates
The want she means to satisfy.
_A Blot on the 'Scutcheon._
Truly, the woman's way
High to lift heart up.
_Agamemnon._
And Michal's face
Still wears that quiet and peculiar light
Like the dim circlet floating 'round a pearl.
* * * * *
And yet her calm sweet countenance,
Though saintly, was not sad; for she would sing
Alone ... bird-like,
Not dreaming you were near.--Her carols dropt
In flakes through that old leafy bower.
_Paracelsus._
... Such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,--
On her neck the small face buoyant like a bell-flower on its bed.
_Lyric._
There's a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest;
And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest;
And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre
Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wild-grape cluster,
Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted marble;
Then her voice's music ... call it the well's bubbling, the bird's warble!
_A Blot on the 'Scutcheon._
How twinks thine eye, my Love,
Blue as yon star-beam.
_Ferishtah's Fancies._
That flower-like love of hers;
* * * * *
She was true--she only of them all!
True to her eyes, ... those glorious eyes.
* * * * *
With truth and purity go other gifts.
All gifts come clustering to that.
_The Return of the Druses._
Good as beautiful is she,
With gifts that match her goodness, no faint flaw
I' the white;--she were the pearl you think you saw.
_Daniel Bartoli._
Since beneath my roof
Housed she who made home heaven, in heaven's behoof
I went forth every day, and all day long
Worked for the world. Look, how the laborer's song
Cheers him! Thus sang my soul, at each sharp throe
Of laboring flesh and blood--"She loves me so!"
_A Forgiveness._
It is conspicuous in a woman's nature
Before its view to take a grace for granted:
Too trustful,--on her boundary, usurpature
Is swftly made;
But swftly, too, decayed,
The glory perishes by woman vaunted.
_Agamemnon._
That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers;
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!
* * * * *
Eyes and mouth too,
All the face composed of flowers....
* * * * *
... The sweet face ...
Be its beauty
Its sole duty!
_A Pretty Woman._
Women hate a debt as
Men a gift.
_In a Balcony._
A pretty woman's worth some pains to see,
Nor is she spoiled, I take it, if a crown
Complete the forehead pale and tresses pure.
_Colombe's Birthday._
Sure, 'tis no woman's part to long for battle;
* * * * *
Who conquers mildly
God from afar benignantly regardeth.
_Agamemnon._
Man's best and woman's worse
Amount so nearly to the same thing.
_Daniel Bartoli._
Nature's law ...
Given the peerless woman, certainly
Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match.
_The Inn Album._
Show me where's the woman won without
The help of one lie which she believes--
That--never mind how things have come to pass,
And let who loves have loved a thousand times--
All the same he now loves her only, loves
Her ever....
_The Inn Album._
Girl with sparkling eyes....
* * * * *
What an angelic mystery you are--
* * * * *
You have a full fresh joyous sense of life
That finds you out life's fit food everywhere;
* * * * *
By joyance you inspire joy.
_The Inn Album._
Now makes twice
That I have seen her, walked and talked
With the poor pretty thoughtful thing,
Whose worth I weigh; she tries to sing:
Draws, hopes in time the eye grows nice;
Reads verse and thinks she understands;
Loves all, at any rate, that's great,
Good, beautiful....
_Dis Aliter Visum._
Wave my lady dear a last farewell,
Lamenting who to one and all of us
Domestics was a mother, myriad harms
She used to ward away from every one,
And mollify her husband's ireful mood.
_Balaustion's Adventure._
Men? say you have the power
To make them yours, rule men, throughout life's little hour,
According to the phrase: what follows?
Men, you make,
By ruling them, your own; each man for his own sake
Accepts you as his guide, avails him of what worth
He apprehends in you to sublimate his earth
With fire; content, if so you convey him through night,
That you shall play the sun, and he, the satellite,
Pilfer your light and heat and virtue, starry pelf,
While, caught up by your course, he turns upon himself.
_Fifine at the Fair._
Any sort of woman may bestow
Her atom on the star, or clod she counts for such,--
Each little making less bigger by just that much.
Women grow you, while men depend on you at best.
_Fifine at the Fair._
Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last
Me your own, your You,--
Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you
For the pure and true,
And the beauteous and the right,--
Bear with a moment's spite
When a mere mote threats the white!
_A Lover's Quarrel._
Love, you did give all I asked, I think--
More than I merit, yes, by many times.
And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,
But had you--oh, with the same perfect brow,
And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare--
Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!
Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged,
"God and the glory! never care for gain;
The present by the future, what is that?
Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
I might have done it for you. So it seems;
Perhaps not. All is as God overrules.
_Andrea Del Sarto._
All women love great men
If young or old; it is in all the tales;
Young beauties love old poets who can love--
* * * * *
Who was a queen and loved a poet once
Humpbacked, a dwarf? ah, women can do that!
_In a Balcony._
For women
There is no good of life but love--but love!
What else looks good, is some shade flung from love;
Love gilds it, gives it worth. Be warned by me.
Never you cheat yourself one instant! Love,
Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest!
_In a Balcony._
Oh, the beautiful girl ...
... Her flesh was the soft seraphic screen
Of a soul that is meant ...
To just see earth, and hardly be seen,
And blossom in heaven instead.
Yet earth saw one thing, one how fair?
One grace that grew to its full ...
... She had her great gold hair.
Hair, such a wonder of flix and floss,
Freshness and fragrance--floods of it, too!
Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross!
_Gold Hair._
She had
A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
* * * * *
'Twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her,--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush at least ...
... Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?
_My Last Duchess._