From “Vashti”

WHAT thing shall be held up to woman’s beauty?

Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all

The world, but an awning scaffolded amid

The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge

This Heaven-wander’d princess, woman’s beauty?

The East and West kneel down to thee, the North

And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear

The load of fourfold space. As yellow morn

Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea,

Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men

That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears

Indeed, and blitheness, murder and lust and love,

Whatever has been passionate in clay,

Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body

The yearnings of all men measured and told,

Insatiate endless agonies of desire

Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape!

What beauty is there, but thou makest it?

How is earth good to look on, woods and fields,

The season’s garden, and the courageous hills,

All this green raft of earth moored in the seas?

The manner of the sun to ride the air,

The stars God has imagined for the night?

What’s this behind them, that we cannot near,

Secret still on the point of being blabbed,

The ghost in the world that flies from being named?

Where do they get their beauty from, all these?

They do but glaze a lantern lit for man,

And woman’s beauty is the flame therein.