Than where blood-cored carnations stood
  She fancied richer hues might be,
  Scents rarer than the purple hood
  Curled over in the fleur-de-lis. 
  Small skill in learned names had she,
  Yet whatso wealth of land or sea
  Had ever stored her memory,
  She decked its varied imagery
  Where, in the highest of the row
  Upon a sill more white than snow,
  She nourished a pomegranate-tree.

  Some lover from a foreign clime,
  Some roving gallant of the main,
  Had brought it on a gay spring-time,
  And told her of the nacar stain
  The thing would wear when bloomed again. 
  Therefore all garden growths in vain
  Their glowing ranks swept through her brain,
  The plant was knit by subtile chain
  To all the balm of Southern zones,
  The incenses of Eastern thrones,
  The tinkling hem of Aaron’s train.

  The almond shaking in the sun
  On some high place ere day begin,
  Where winds of myrrh and cinnamon
  Between the tossing plumes have been,
  It called before her, and its kin
  The fragrant savage balaustine
  Grown from the ruined ravelin
  That tawny leopards couch them in;
  But this, if rolling in from seas
  It only caught the salt-fumed breeze,
  Would have a grace they might not win.

  And for the fruit that it should bring,
  One globe she pictured, bright and near,
  Crimson, and throughly perfuming
  All airs that brush its shining sphere. 
  In its translucent atmosphere
  Afrite and Princess reappear,—­
  Through painted panes the scattered spear
  Of sunrise scarce so warm and clear,—­
  And pulped with such a golden juice,
  Ambrosial, that one cannot choose
  But find the thought most sumptuous cheer.

  Of all fair women she was queen,
  And all her beauty, late and soon,
  O’ercame you like the mellow sheen
  Of some serene autumnal noon. 
  Her presence like a sweetest tune
  Accorded all your thoughts in one. 
  Than last year’s alder-tufts in June
  Browner, yet lustrous as a moon
  Her eyes glowed on you, and her hair
  With such an air as princes wear
  She trimmed black-braided in a crown.

  A perfect peace prepared her days,
  Few were her wants and small her care,
  No weary thoughts perplexed her ways,
  She hardly knew if she were fair.

  Bent lightly at her needle there
  In that small room stair over stair,
  All fancies blithe and debonair
  She deftly wrought on fabrics rare,
  All clustered moss, all drifting snow,
  All trailing vines, all flowers that blow,
  Her daedal fingers laid them bare.

  Still at the slowly spreading leaves
  She glanced up ever and anon,
  If yet the shadow of the eaves
  Had paled the dark gloss they put on. 
  But while her smile like sunlight shone,
  The life danced to such blossom blown
  That all the roses ever known,
  Blanche of Provence, Noisette, or Yonne,
  Wore no such tint as this pale streak
  That damasked half the rounding cheek
  Of each bud great to bursting grown.