I.— The Comparison.

Where she succeeds with cloudless brow,

In common and in holy course,

He fails, in spite of prayer and vow

And agonies of faith and force;

Or, if his suit with Heaven prevails

To righteous life, his virtuous deeds

Lack beauty, virtue's badge; she fails

More graciously than he succeeds.

Her spirit, compact of gentleness,

If Heaven postpones or grants her pray'r,

Conceives no pride in its success,

And in its failure no despair;

But his, enamour'd of its hurt,

Baffled, blasphemes, or, not denied,

Crows from the dunghill of desert,

And wags its ugly wings for pride.

He's never young nor ripe; she grows

More infantine, auroral, mild,

And still the more she lives and knows

The lovelier she's express'd a child.

Say that she wants the will of man

To conquer fame, not check'd by cross,

Nor moved when others bless or ban;

She wants but what to have were loss.

Or say she wants the patient brain

To track shy truth; her facile wit

At that which he hunts down with pain

Flies straight, and does exactly hit.

Were she but half of what she is,

He twice himself, mere love alone,

Her special crown, as truth is his,

Gives title to the worthier throne;

For love is substance, truth the form;

Truth without love were less than nought;

But blindest love is sweet and warm,

And full of truth not shaped by thought,

And therefore in herself she stands

Adorn'd with undeficient grace,

Her happy virtues taking hands,

Each smiling in another's face.

So, dancing round the Tree of Life,

They make an Eden in her breast,

While his, disjointed and at strife,

Proud-thoughted, do not bring him rest.