Teresa and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Where dips the wood floor to a cup,
My lady in her hand held up
A tuft of moss—each tiny frond
Fraught with a molten diamond
Of dew, set ready for the sip
Of pixy's or of fairy's lip.
Awhile she gazed in pensive case;
Then, as she pressed it to her face,
‘O fairer in thy forest-bed,
And sweeter than all flowers,’ she said.

Howe'er it be, one thing I wot,
Thou hast a virtue these have not;
Ay, modest weed, for matched with thee
The snowdrop flaunts her purity,
Pride lifts the cowslip, the wild rose
As conscious of her beauty glows,
The violet so demurely bent,
Of her own heart is redolent;
Each lovely sister, as is meet,
Breathes sweetness in itself complete,
Ere tasted, past imagining;
But thou, a tear-born, holy thing,
In whose dim fragrance we recall
Earth's odour, the dear source of all,
Whose forms a myriad tints unfold,
Coral and amber, green and gold,
Deem'st not thyself too fair or sweet
To spread a carpet for man's feet;

And more, belike, in thee is found
Of heaven, as nearer to the ground.

So, in God's sight, methinks, 'tis true,
That of all deeds we mortals do,
All thoughts that harbour in the breast
The sweetest are the lowliest.