TO A YOUNG GIRL WHO SAID SHE WAS NOT BEAUTIFUL
It's not her hair and it's not her feet,
Nor the way she walks with her head held high;
It's not because her eye-brows meet
Like a bird's wings over a glimpse of sky;
And it isn't her voice like April bloom
Rustling through an orchard's gloom—
It's none of these; not her wide gray eye,
Nor her crumpled mouth like a rose-bud red
Round which the snows of the jasmine spread.
Though her long white hands
Are like lilies of Lent,
Palely young and purely bent
O'er her breast, where God stands,
It's none of these.
Flowers and trees
With her to compare
Are too little rare.
Though the grass yearns up to touch her feet,
She is loved for this—she is sweet, sweet, sweet.