The Gifts of Beauty to Maid and Matron

Flower and jewel can charm the eye
For I give them many a pleasing dye,
But a fairer, lovelier work is mine
For whose delight they bloom and shine,
My human gem, my animate flower,
     Soul-flushed and sparkling from light of her own,
     The Maiden in home-love’s garden grown;
Merry or grave she wears my dower
     Of simple beauty for her crown;
Every line of her flexile form,
     From the rippling hair to the foot’s light arch,
I drew,—and shaped while the clay was warm,—
     In the complex curves of the starry march
Ye liken her well to all dainty things,
     To all that is pure, and fair, and sweet;
With her fluting voice the bob-o-link sings;
From the rhyming beat of her dancing feet
     Ye feel they are buoyed by invisible wings.
The whole world knows my lily and rose
And ever brilliant flower that blows
     In the glare of the vertical sun;
But – only my darling lover knows
     It may be something of the rose
Has gone from hers to pain her baby’s flesh,
     Of the sound limbs some fullness goes
To mould that new life’s form, so fair and fresh;
     But I have not forgotten yet
The earliest love claim of my virgin pet.
     Softly my secret fingers trace
An infinite meaning in her matron face,
     And down the deep heavens of her eye
Through hers my spirit sheds a beam intense,
     The light of a diviner sky,
The prescient dawn and living evidence
          Of a sublime destiny;
As of that eye in its prophetic glance
     Saw down the future’s broad expanse,
Through hopes that made a halo of her fears,
          The vista of immortal years,
The uncertain issue of life’s burden rest—
     Upon her sleeping baby’s breast,
Yet love supreme becomes instinctive to nest
     God, too, is Mother, and only love is just!