A Woman's Always Younger Than A Man

And Wilt Thou Have Me Fashion Into Speech The Love I Bear Thee, Finding Words Enough, And Hold The Torch Out, While The Winds Are Rough, Between Our Faces, To Cast Light On Each? - I Dropt It At Thy Feet. I Cannot Teach My Hand To Hold My Spirits So Far Off From Myself--me--that I Should Bring Thee Proof In Words, Of Love Hid In Me Out Of Reach. Nay, Let The Silence Of My Womanhood Commend My Woman-love To Thy Belief, - Seeing That I Stand Unwon, However Wooed, And Rend The Garment Of My Life, In Brief, By A Most Dauntless, Voiceless Fortitude, Lest One Touch Of This Heart Convey Its Grief.

It Is Not Merely The Likeness Which Is Precious... But The Association And The Sense Of Nearness Involved In The Thing... The Fact Of The Very Shadow Of The Person Lying There Fixed Forever! It Is The Very Sanctification Of Portraits I Think - And It Is Not At All Monstrous In Me To Say That I Would Rather Have Such A Memorial Of One I Dearly Loved, Than The Noblest Artist's Work Ever Produced.

Unless You Can Muse In A Crowd All Day On The Absent Face That Fixed You; Unless You Can Love, As The Angels May, With The Breadth Of Heaven Betwixt You; Unless You Can Dream That His Faith Is Fast, Through Behoving And Unbehoving; Unless You Can Die When The Dream Is Past — Oh, Never Call It Loving!

And Lilies Are Still Lilies, Pulled By Smutty Hands, Though Spotted From Their White.

Most Illogical Irrational Nature Of Our Womanhood, That Blushes One Way, Feels Another Way, And Prays, Perhaps Another!