| T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22. | | | | Sonnet LVI. True Woman: I. Herself | | By Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) |
| | (From The House of Life, 1881)
TO be a sweetness more desired than Spring; | |
| A bodily beauty more acceptable | |
| Than the wild rose-tree’s arch that crowns the fell; | |
| To be an essence more environing | |
| Than wine’s drained juice; a music ravishing | 5 |
| More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;— | |
| To be all this ’neath one soft bosom’s swell | |
| That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing! | |
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| How strange a thing to be what Man can know | |
| But as a sacred secret! Heaven’s own screen | 10 |
| Hides her soul’s purest depth and loveliest glow; | |
| Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,— | |
| The wave-bowered pearl,—the heart-shaped seal of green | |
| That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow. | | | | |
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