A Portrait.

She was not very beautiful, if it be beauty's test     To match a classic model when perfectly at rest;     And she did not look bewitchingly, if witchery it be,     To have a forehead and a lip transparent as the sea.     The fashion of her gracefulness was not a follow'd rule,     And her effervescent sprightliness was never learnt at school;     And her words were all peculiar, like the fairy's who 'spoke pearls;'     And her tone was ever sweetest midst the cadences of girls.     Said I she was not beautiful? Her eyes upon your sight     Broke with the lambent purity of planetary light,     And an intellectual beauty, like a light within a vase,     Touched every line with glory of her animated face.     Her mind with sweets was laden, like a morning breath in June,     And her thoughts awoke in harmony, like dreamings of a tune,     And you heard her words like voices that o'er the waters creep,     Or like a serenader's lute that mingles with your sleep.     She had an earnest intellect - a perfect thirst of mind,     And a heart by elevated thoughts and poetry refin'd,     And she saw a subtle tint or shade with every careless look,     And the hidden links of nature were familiar as a book.     She's made of those rare elements that now and then appear,     As if remov'd by accident unto a lesser sphere,     Forever reaching up, and on, to life's sublimer things,     As if they had been used to track the universe with wings.