She gives thee a garland woven fair,
Take care!

It is a fool's-cap for thee to wear,

Beware! Beware!

Trust her not,

She is fooling thee!

Wordsworth near the beginning of this century gives this loving tribute to womanhood:

She was a Phantom of Delight

She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament.

Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn-
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;

A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eyes serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveler between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.

Edgar A. Poe, than whom no one possessed a greater mastery of the true music of verse, penned these lines:

To belen

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo, in yon brilliant window niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast !

66

A voice from out the Future cries, 'On, on!" but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf !) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast !

For alas! alas! with me

The light of life is o'er!

No more

no more no more

(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

And Burns catching the music of the Scottish river surrounds his Mary with the soothing atmosphere of his love:

Flow Gently, Sweet Afton

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,

Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;

My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds through the glen,

Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,

Thou green-crested lap-wing, thy screaming forbear,

I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills, Far marked with the courses of clear winding rills;

There daily I wander as noon rises high,

My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.