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Coventry Patmore - The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto V.
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Preludes.

I The Comparison 
              Where she succeeds with cloudless brow,
              In common and in holy course,
              He fails, in spite of prayer and vow
              And agonies of faith and force;
              Or, if his suit with Heaven prevails
              To righteous life, his virtuous deeds
              Lack beauty, virtue`s badge; she fails
              More graciously than he succeeds.
              Her spirit, compact of gentleness,
               If Heaven postpones or grants her pray`r,
               Conceives no pride in its success,
               And in its failure no despair;
               But his, enamour`d of its hurt,
               Baffled, blasphemes, or, not denied,
               Crows from the dunghill of desert,
               And wags its ugly wings for pride.
               He`s never young nor ripe; she grows
               More infantine, auroral, mild,
               And still the more she lives and knows
               The lovelier she`s express`d a child.    
               Say that she wants the will of man
               To conquer fame, not check`d by cross,
               Nor moved when others bless or ban;
               She wants but what to have were loss.
               Or say she wants the patient brain
               To track shy truth; her facile wit
               At that which he hunts down with pain
               Flies straight, and does exactly hit.
               Were she but half of what she is,
               He twice himself, mere love alone,
               Her special crown, as truth is his,
               Gives title to the worthier throne;
               For love is substance, truth the form;
               Truth without love were less than nought;
               But blindest love is sweet and warm,
               And full of truth not shaped by thought;
               And therefore in herself she stands
               Adorn`d with undeficient grace,
               Her happy virtues taking hands,
               Each smiling in another`s face.
               So, dancing round the Tree of Life,
               They make an Eden in her breast,
               While his, disjointed and at strife,
               Proud-thoughted, do not bring him rest.

II Love in Tears 
               If fate Love`s dear ambition mar,
               And load his breast with hopeless pain,
               And seem to blot out sun and star,
               Love, won or lost, is countless gain;
               His sorrow boasts a secret bliss
               Which sorrow of itself beguiles,
               And Love in tears too noble is
               For pity, save of Love in smiles.    
               But, looking backward through his tears,
               With vision of maturer scope,
               How often one dead joy appears
               The platform of some better hope!
               And, let us own, the sharpest smart
               Which human patience may endure
               Pays light for that which leaves the heart
               More generous, dignified, and pure.

III Prospective Faith 
               They safely walk in darkest ways
               Whose youth is lighted from above,
               Where, through the senses` silvery haze,
               Dawns the veil`d moon of nuptial love.
               Who is the happy husband? He
               Who, scanning his unwedded life,
               Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,
               `Twas faithful to his future wife.

IV Venus Victrix 
               Fatal in force, yet gentle in will,
               Defeats, from her, are tender pacts,
               For, like the kindly lodestone, still
               She`s drawn herself by what she attracts.


The Violets.  

 I
               I went not to the Dean`s unbid:
               I would not have my mystery,
               From her so delicately hid,
               The guess of gossips at their tea.
               A long, long week, and not once there,
               Had made my spirit sick and faint,
               And lack-love, foul as love is fair,
               Perverted all things to complaint.
               How vain the world had grown to be!
               How mean all people and their ways,
               How ignorant their sympathy,
               And how impertinent their praise;
               What they for virtuousness esteem`d,
               How far removed from heavenly right;
               What pettiness their trouble seem`d,
               How undelightful their delight;
               To my necessity how strange
               The sunshine and the song of birds;
               How dull the clouds` continual change,
               How foolishly content the herds;
               How unaccountable the law
               Which bade me sit in blindness here,
               While she, the sun by which I saw,
               Shed splendour in an idle sphere!
               And then I kiss`d her stolen glove,
               And sigh`d to reckon and define
               The modes of martyrdom in love,
                And how far each one might be mine.
                I thought how love, whose vast estate
                Is earth and air and sun and sea,    
                Encounters oft the beggar`s fate,
                Despised on score of poverty;
                How Heaven, inscrutable in this,
                Lets the gross general make or mar
                The destiny of love, which is
                So tender and particular;
                How nature, as unnatural
                And contradicting nature`s source,
                Which is but love, seems most of all
                Well-pleased to harry true love`s course;
                How, many times, it comes to pass
                That trifling shades of temperament,
                Affecting only one, alas,
                Not love, but love`s success prevent;
                How manners often falsely paint
                The man; how passionate respect,
                Hid by itself, may bear the taint
                Of coldness and a dull neglect;
                And how a little outward dust
                Can a clear merit quite o`ercloud,
                And make her fatally unjust,
                And him desire a darker shroud;
                How senseless opportunity
                Gives baser men the better chance;
                How powers, adverse else, agree
                To cheat her in her ignorance;
                How Heaven its very self conspires
                With man and nature against love,
                As pleased to couple cross desires,
                And cross where they themselves approve.
                Wretched were life, if the end were now!
                But this gives tears to dry despair,
                Faith shall be blest, we know not how,
                And love fulfilled, we know not where.

    
 II
                While thus I grieved, and kiss`d her glove,
                My man brought in her note to say,
                Papa had bid her send his love,
                And would I dine with them next day?
                They had learn`d and practised Purcell`s glee,
                To sing it by to-morrow night.
                The Postscript was: Her sisters and she
                Inclosed some violets, blue and white;
                She and her sisters found them where
                I wager`d once no violets grew;
                So they had won the gloves. And there
                The violets lay, two white, one blue.
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