Have you seen but a bright lily grow
    Before rude hands have touched it? 
  Have you mark’d but the fall of the snow
    Before the soil hath smutch’d it? 
  Have you felt the wool of beaver
    Or swan’s down ever? 
  Or have smelt o’ the bud o’ the brier,
    Or the nard in the fire? 
  Or have tasted the bag of the bee? 
  O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she!

The first of the above stanzas is a study after the Roman poets; but the last stanza is Jonson’s own and is very famous.  You will see that Browning was probably inspired by him, but I think that his verses are much more beautiful in thought and feeling.

There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry—­the old maid, the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her natural destiny.  Commonly the woman who never marries is said to become cross, bad tempered, unpleasant in character.  She could not be blamed for this, I think; but there are old maids who always remain as unselfish and frank and kind as a girl, and who keep the charm of girlhood even when their hair is white.  Hartley Coleridge, son of the great Samuel, attempted to describe such a one, and his picture is both touching and beautiful.

THE SOLITARY-HEARTED

  She was a queen of noble Nature’s crowning,
    A smile of hers was like an act of grace;
  She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning,
    Like daily beauties of the vulgar race: 
  But if she smiled, a light was on her face,
    A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam
  Of peaceful radiance, silvering o’er the stream
    Of human thought with unabiding glory;
  Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream,
    A visitation, bright and transitory.

  But she is changed,—­hath felt the touch of sorrow,
    No love hath she, no understanding friend;
  O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow
    What the poor niggard earth has not to lend;
  But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. 
    The tallest flower that skyward rears its head
  Grows from the common ground, and there must shed
    Its delicate petals.  Cruel fate, too surely
  That they should find so base a bridal bed,
    Who lived in virgin pride, so sweet and purely.

  She had a brother, and a tender father,
    And she was loved, but not as others are
  From whom we ask return of love,—­but rather
    As one might love a dream; a phantom fair
  Of something exquisitely strange and rare,
    Which all were glad to look on, men and maids,
  Yet no one claimed—­as oft, in dewy glades,
    The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness,
  Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades;—­
    The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness.