| WHAT is this maiden fair, | |
| The laughing of whose eye | |
| Is in man’s heart renew’d virginity; | |
| Who yet sick longing breeds | |
| For marriage which exceeds | 5 |
| The inventive guess of Love to satisfy | |
| With hope of utter binding, and of loosing endless dear despair? | |
| What gleams about her shine, | |
| More transient than delight and more divine! | |
| If she does something but a little sweet, | 10 |
| As gaze towards the glass to set her hair, | |
| See how his soul falls humbled at her feet! | |
| Her gentle step, to go or come, | |
| Gains her more merit than a martyrdom; | |
| And, if she dance, it doth such grace confer | 15 |
| As opes the heaven of heavens to more than her, | |
| And makes a rival of her worshipper. | |
| To die unknown for her were little cost! | |
| So is she without guile, | |
| Her mere refused smile | 20 |
| Makes up the sum of that which may be lost! | |
| Who is this Fair | |
| Whom each hath seen, | |
| The darkest once in this bewailed dell, | |
| Be he not destin’d for the glooms of hell? | 25 |
| Whom each hath seen | |
| And known, with sharp remorse and sweet, as Queen | |
| And tear-glad Mistress of his hopes of bliss, | |
| Too fair for man to kiss? | |
| Who is this only happy She, | 30 |
| Whom, by a frantic flight of courtesy, | |
| Born of despair | |
| Of better lodging for his Spirit fair, | |
| He adores as Margaret, Maude, or Cecily? | |
| And what this sigh, | 35 |
| That each one heaves for Earth’s last lowlihead | |
| And the Heaven high | |
| Ineffably lock’d in dateless bridal-bed? | |
| Are all, then, mad, or is it prophecy? | |
| ‘Sons now we are of God,’ as we have heard, | 40 |
| ‘But what we shall be hath not yet appear’d.’ | |
| O, Heart, remember thee, | |
| That Man is none, | |
| Save One. | |
| What if this Lady be thy Soul, and He | 45 |
| Who claims to enjoy her sacred beauty be, | |
| Not thou, but God; and thy sick fire | |
| A female vanity, | |
| Such as a Bride, viewing her mirror’d charms, | |
| Feels when she sighs, ‘All these are for his arms!’ | 50 |
| A reflex heat | |
| Flash’d on thy cheek from His immense desire, | |
| Which waits to crown, beyond thy brain’s conceit, | |
| Thy nameless, secret, hopeless longing sweet, | |
| Not by and by, but now, | 55 |
| Unless deny Him thou! | |
