I. SHE is a woman: therefore, I a man, In so much as I love her. Could I more, Then I were more a man. Our natures ran Together, brimming full, not flooding o'er The banks of life, and evermore will run In one full stream until our days are done. II. She is a woman, but of spirit brave To bear the loss of girlhood's giddy dreams; The regal mistress, not the yielding slave Of her ideal, spurning that which seems For that which is, and, as her fancies fall, Smiling: the truth of love outweighs them all. III. She looks through life, and with a balance just Weighs men and things, beholding as they are The lives of others: in the common dust She finds the fragments of the ruined star: Proud, with a pride all feminine and sweet, No path can soil the whiteness of her feet. IV. The steady candor of her gentle eyes Strikes dead deceit, laughs vanity away; She hath no room for petty jealousies, Where Faith and Love divide their tender sway. Of either sex she owns the nobler part: Man's honest brow and woman's faithful heart. V. She is a woman, who, if Love were guide, Would climb to power, or in obscure content Sit down: accepting fate with changeless pride -- A reed in calm, in storm a staff unbent: No pretty plaything, ignorant of life, But Man's true mother, and his equal wife. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PUTTING IN THE SEED by ROBERT FROST CHURCH-MUSICK [CHURCH MUSIC] by GEORGE HERBERT TO THE SAME PURPOSE by THOMAS TRAHERNE THE WATCHERS by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE SMOKE IS THE FOOD OF LOVERS by JACOB CATS |