’Twould make a brave expansion,
And pounced with stars, it show’d to me
Like a celestial canopy.”
Göthe, that lover of many ladies, never decks one wholly, but now and then he makes a gift interpreting his taste, as when Lamon remarks, in the ‘Laune des Verliebten’:—
“Die Rose seh’ ich gern in einem schwarzen Haar.”
The French poets put all their swains in tight gloves and loose principles; and their nymphs are as anxious about their dress, as though there were soirées in Tempe, and a Longchamps in Arcadia. Thus Chénier’s Naïs bids Daphnis not to crease her veil, and, with a shrewd idea of the cost of a new frock, how snappishly does the pretty thing reply to the invitation to recline on the shady bank:—
“Vois, cet humide gazon
Va souiller ma tunique!”
How pure, compared or not compared with this calculating nymph, is the Madeline of Endymion Keats. The English poet undresses his young maiden with a “niceness” that gives us as much right to look as Porphyro:—