Thus do I know her: but for what men call Beauty--the loveliness corporeal, Its most just praise a thing unproper were To singer or to listener, me or her. She wears that body but as one indues A robe, half careless, for it is the use; Although her soul and it so fair agree, We sure may, unattaint of heresy, Conceit it might the soul's begetter be. The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests its every trait. God laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members as on smoothèd keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies. I'll speak a little proudly:--I disdain To count the beauty worth my wish or gain, Which the dull daily fool can covet or obtain. I do confess the fairness of the spoil, But from such rivalry it takes a soil. For her I'll proudlier speak:--how could it be That I should praise the gilding on the psaltery? 'Tis not for her to hold that prize a prize, Or praise much praise, though proudest in its wise, To which even hopes of merely women rise. Such strife would to the vanquished laurels yield, Against _her_ suffered to have lost a field. Herself must with herself be sole compeer, Unless the people of her distant sphere Some gold migration send to melodise the year. Yet I have felt what terrors may consort In women's cheeks, the Graces' soft resort; My hand hath shook at gentle hands' access, And trembled at the waving of a tress; My blood known panic fear, and fled dismayed, Where ladies' eyes have set their ambuscade. The rustle of a robe hath been to me The very rattle of love's musketry; Although my heart hath beat the loud advance, I have recoiled before a challenging glance, Proved gay alarms where warlike ribbons dance. And from it all, this knowledge have I got,-- The whole that others have, is less than they have not; All which makes other women noted fair, Unnoted would remain and overshone in her. How should I gauge what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the casement for the sky? And, as 'tis check they prove its presence by, I know not of her body till I find My flight debarred the heaven of her mind. Hers is the face whence all should copied be, Did God make replicas of such as she; Its presence felt by what it does abate, Because the soul shines through tempered and mitigate: Where--as a figure labouring at night Beside the body of a splendid light-- Dark Time works hidden by its luminousness; And every line he labours to impress Turns added beauty, like the veins that run Athwart a leaf which hangs against the sun.