George Eliot

“ The joy of matrons and of maidens all
Was the mock terror of the tournament,
Where safety, with the glimpse of danger blent,
Took exaltation as from epic song,
Which greatly tells the pains that to great life belong. ”

“ By life that will be for the brief life gone:
Hear, ere the shroud o'er these frail limbs be thrown--
Since every king is vassal unto thee,
My heart's lord needs must listen loyally--
O tell him I am waiting for my Death! ”

“ Their commoner gloss, like the pure living spring
'Twixt porphyry lips, or living bird's bright wing
'Twixt golden wires, the glances of the king
Flashed on her soul, and waked vibrations there
Of known delights love-mixed to new and rare:
The impalpable dream was turned to breathing flesh,
Chill thought of summer to the warm close mesh
Of sunbeams held between the citron-leaves,
Clothing her life of life. Oh! ”

“ Making grief beauteous as the tear-filled eyes
Of little child at little miseries.
Trembling at first, then swelling as it rose,
Like rising light that broad and broader grows,
It filled the hall, and so possessed the air,
That not one living, breathing soul was there,
Though dullest, slowest, but was quivering
In Music's grasp, and forced to hear her sing. ”

“ For were I now a fair deep-breasted queen
A-horseback, with blonde hair, and tunic green,
Gold-bordered, like Costanza, I should need
No change within to make me queenly there:
For they the royal-hearted women are
Who nobly love the noblest, yet have grace;
For needy suffering lives in lowliest place,
Carrying a choicer sunlight in their smile,
The heavenliest ray that pitieth the vile. ”

“ Pulses that gave her cheek a finer glow,
Parting her lips that seemed a mimic bow
By chiselling Love for play in coral wrought,
Then quickened by him with the passionate thought,
The soul that trembled in the lustrous night
Of slow long eyes. Her body was so slight,
It seemed she could have floated in the sky,
And with the angelic choir made symphony;
But in her cheek’s rich tinge, and in the dark
Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark
p. 13Of kinship to her generous mother-earth,
The fervid land that gives the plumy palm-trees birth. ”

“ Before his cheek was furrowed by deep rhyme;
When Europe, fed afresh from Eastern story,
Was like a garden tangled with the glory
Of flowers hand-planted and of flowers air-sown,
Climbing and trailing, budding and full-blown,
Where purple bells are tossed amid pink stars,
And springing blades, green troops in innocent wars,
Crowd every shady spot of teeming earth,
Making invisible motion visible birth,-- ”

“ For how could generous men avengers be,
Save as God's messengers on coursers fleet?--
These, scouring earth, made Spain with Syria meet
In one self-world where the same right had sway,
And good must grow as grew the blessed day. ”

“ So that her maids might walk to vespers tranquilly.
Young Lisa saw this hero in the king;
And as wood-lilies that sweet odors bring
Might dream the light that opes their modest eyne
Was lily-odored; and as rites divine,
Round turf-laid altars, or ’neath roofs of stone,
Draw sanctity from out the heart alone
That loves and worships: so the miniature
Perplexed of her soul’s world, all virgin pure,
Filled with heroic virtues that bright form,
Raona’s royalty, the finished norm
Of horsemanship, the half of chivalry;
For how could generous men avengers be,
p. ”