| 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? | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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. | |
