In an anonymous volume of poems printed in 1653, the writer being contemporary with Butler, we find the following beautiful sentiment:—
“How her feet tempt; how soft and light she treads,
Fearing to wake the flowers from their beds:
Yet from their sweet green pillows everywhere
They start and gaze about to see my fair.
* * * * *
Look how that pretty modest columbine
Hangs down its head to view those feet of thine!
See the fond motion of the strawberrie
Creeping on earth we go along with thee;
The lovely violet makes after too,
Unwilling yet, my dear, to part with you.
The knot-grass and the daisies catch thy toes
To kisse my faire one’s feet before she goes.”
Shakspere, in “Troilus and Cressida,” describes Diomede walking:—
“‘Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait;
He rises on the toe; that spirit of his,
In aspiration lifts him from the earth!”
Again:—
“Shore’s wife hath a pretty foot;”
and his graphic description of a free-natured woman—
——“nay, her foot speaks.”
Old Herrick, who seems to have had the finest perception of the delicate and charming, thus compliments Mrs. Susanna Southwood:—
“Her pretty feet,
Like smiles, did creep
A little out, and then,
As if they started at bo peep,
Did soon draw in again.”