To A Lovely Woman

Shall I compare you to a rainbowed shower

Drawing to earth the very arc of dream,

Or shall I say you are an orchid flower

That fevers men beside a jungle stream?

Shall I compare you to a windy morning

Because you stir the sleeping blood and brain

To rise and follow beauty till beauty, scorning

Desire’s fleet runners, vanishes again?

No, you are more than spectrum, than the find

Of orchid hunters, than ariel dawn on wings.

And I, who know you are the undefined

Reality of all unreal things,

Now wisely set your breathlessness apart

As the unanswered challenge to the dreamer’s art.