If you, my sweet, were homely as a clod, Without this dower of beauty I adore, I still should love you as a thing from God Perfect beyond what I had known before; But here the marvel is: these candid eyes, More beautiful than stars; this gleaming hair, Coiled and recoiled in dark mysterious plies, Too heavy for the little head to bear; These hands, so shaped for giving; and these lips For speech so glorified with tenderness, For the true touch of love, wherefrom there slips More from the heart than these poor words confess. O living vase of life, within whose fold, So fragile and so exquisitely pure, The seed of immortality finds hold For all that bids this fearful life endure --: How can it be that powers that love the world Shall change, remove, resign you to the land Of death before the darkness half lies furled -- I gaze on you; I cannot understand! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO THE UNKNOWN EROS: BOOK 2: 3. ARBOR VITAE by COVENTRY KERSEY DIGHTON PATMORE THE HOUSE OF LIFE: 101. THE ONE HOPE by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI HAMPTON BEACH by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE PREACHER by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE COLD WAVE OF 32 B.C. by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS ON SEEING BLENHEIM CASTLE by LUCY AIKEN SONNET: BARBERRIES by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH |