“O VALDE DECORA!”
Could I but see thee, dear my love!
That face—but once! Not dazzling bright—
Not as the blest above
Behold it in God’s light—
But as it look’d at La Salette;
Or when, in Pyrenean wild,
It beam’d on Bernadette,
The favor’d peasant child.
Once seen—a moment—it would blind
These eyes to beauty less than thine:
And where could poet find
Such theme for song as mine?
But if I ask what may not be,
So spell me with thy pictur’d face
That haunting looks from thee
May hold me like a grace.