This poem was issued by itself as well as included later in Dramatis Personæ, and simultaneously with its appearance in England it was printed in The Atlantic Monthly. It was written in Normandy, and in a letter printed in Mrs. Orr's Life, II. 395, there is an account of the destruction of the church referred to in the poem.
Oh, the beautiful girl, too white,
Who lived at Pornic, down by the sea,
Just where the sea and the Loire unite!
And a boasted name in Brittany
She bore, which I will not write.
Too white, for the flower of life is red:
Her flesh was the soft seraphic screen
Of a soul that is meant (her parents said)
To just see earth, and hardly be seen,