The suggestion is obvious, that the maiden realizes to the lover’s eye the ideal of an angel.  As she comes he asks her slyly,—­for she has been to the church—­“Is it true that nobody ever sees real angels?” She answers innocently, thinking him to be in earnest, “No—­long ago people used to see angels, but in these times no one ever sees them.”  He does not dare tell her how beautiful she seems to him; but he suggests much more than admiration by the tone of his protesting response to her answer:  “What!  You cannot mean to say that there are no angels now?” Of course that is the same as to say, “I see an angel now”—­but the girl is much too innocent to take the real and flattering meaning.

Wordsworth’s portrait of the ideal woman is very famous; it was written about his own wife though that fact would not be guessed from the poem.  The last stanza is the most famous, but we had better quote them all.

  She was a phantom of delight
  When first she gleamed upon my sight;
  A lovely apparition, sent
  To be a moment’s ornament;
  Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
  Like twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
  But all things else about her drawn
  From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
  A dancing shape, an image gay,
  To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

  I saw her upon nearer view,
  A Spirit, yet a Woman too! 
  Her household motions light and free,
  And steps of virgin liberty;
  A countenance in which did meet
  Sweet records, promises as sweet;
  A creature not too bright or good
  For human nature’s daily food;
  For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
  Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.

  And now I see with eye serene
  The very pulse of the machine;
  A being breathing thoughtful breath,
  A traveller betwixt life and death;
  The reason firm, the temperate will,
  Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
  A perfect woman, nobly plann’d,
  To warn, to comfort and command;
  And yet a Spirit still, and bright
  With something of angelic light.

I quoted this after the Pansie poem to show you how much more deeply Wordsworth could touch the same subject.  To him, too, the first apparition of the ideal maiden seemed angelic; like Ashe he could perceive the mingled attraction of innocence and of youth.  But innocence and youth are by no means all that make up the best attributes of woman; character is more than innocence and more than youth, and it is character that Wordsworth studies.  But in the last verse he tells us that the angel is always there, nevertheless, even when the good woman becomes old.  The angel is the Mother-soul.

Wordsworth’s idea that character is the supreme charm was expressed very long before him by other English poets, notably by Thomas Carew.

  He that loves a rosy cheek,
    Or a coral lip admires,
  Or from star-like eyes doth seek
    Fuel to maintain his fires: 
  As old Time makes these decay,
    So his flames must waste away.