by Oscar Wilde
A lily-girl, not made for this world's pain,
With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears,
And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous* tears
Like bluest water seen through mists of rain:
Pale cheeks whereon no love hath* left its stain,
Red underlip drawn in for fear of love,
And white throat, whiter than silvered dove,
Through whose wan* marble creeps one purple vein.
Yet, though my lips shall praise her without cease,
Even to kiss her feet I am not bold,
Being o'ershadowed by the wings of awe,
Like Dante, when he stood with Beatrice
Beneath the flaming Lion's breast, and saw
The seventh Crystal, and the Stair of Gold.
slumberous : sleepy; heavy with drowsiness, as the eyelids.
hath : have
wan : (of a person's face) more pale than usual and tired-looking
PLAY THE AUDIO:
My thoughts:
The poem turns the woman into something almost divine, untouchable and unreachable. The more the speaker praises her, the less human she becomes, because she is transformed into an ideal rather than a real person. There is a contradiction in the way she is presented since she is desirable because she is pure and untouched but the same purity makes her impossible to approach. I feel like the poem (its structure, the layout, the zoom in then zooming out…) reflects this movement of closeness and withdrawal. But the purple vein is interesting; it is the only detail that reminds us that she is, in fact, human. The woman is idealised, and I wonder how she would have been described if she had experienced love? Since « no love hath* left its stain, » love is perceived as something that leaves a mark or alters the female body implying that experience would diminish her perfection. Raising the question of is she divine only because she is pure and a virgin? The woman here is trap: either she is too pure to be touched or she is soiled and merely human, unworthy of the same reverence.
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