Poem by Henry Taylor

A Perfect Woman

She was a creature framed by love divine
For mortal love to muse a life away
In pondering her perfections; so unmoved
Amidst the world's contentions, if they touched
No vital chord nor troubled what she loved,
Philosophy might look her in the face,
And like a hermit stopping to the well"
That yields him sweet. refreshment, might therein
See but his own serenity reflected
With a more heavenly tenderness of hue!
Yet whilst the world's ambitious empty cares,
Its small disquietudes and insect stings
Disturbed her never, she was one made up
Of feminine affections, and her life
Was one full stream of love from fount to sea.
Such was her inward being, which to fit
With answerable grace of outward favour,
Nature bestowed corporeal beauty bright,
Framed in such mood of passionate conception
As when the Godhead, from a dream of love
Awaking, with poetic rapture seized,
Substantiates the vision, and the form
His dreaming fancy feigned, creates alive.
— These are but words.

1. St. Helen’s-Auckland
2. The Eve of the Conquest
3. Art and Life
4. A Welcome
5. Dear Alice

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