durance, 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.

But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these, are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.

For about three hundred years in English literature it was the fashion--a
fashion borrowed from the Latin poets--to speak of love as a fire or
flame, and you must understand the image in these verses in that
signification. To-day the fashion is not quite dead, but very few poets
now follow it.

Byron himself, with all his passion and his affected scorn of ethical
convention, could and did, when he pleased, draw beautiful portraits of
moral as well as physical attraction. These stanzas are famous; they paint
for us a person with equal attraction of body and mind.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,