Isabella—in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect truth.
Juliet—within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red within the bosom of a rose.
Cordelia—who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.
Hermione—"tender as infancy and grace"—who bore with perfect hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart.
Desdemona—so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying words sought to hide her lover's crime—and with her last faint breath uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid lips.
Perdita—A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes—"The sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward." And Helena—who said:
"I know I love in vain, strive against hope—
Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still,
Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more."
Miranda—who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to the kisses of the sun.
And Cordelia, whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless Imogen, who cried:
"What is it to be false?"