A white face, drooping, on a bending neck: <br /> A tube-rose that with heavy petal curves <br /> Her stem: a foam-bell on a wave that swerves <br />Back from the undulating vessel's deck. <br /> <br />From out the whitest cloud of summer steals <br /> The wildest lightning: from this face of thine <br /> Thy soul, a fire-of-heaven, warm and fine, <br />In marvellous flashes its fair self reveals. <br /> <br />As when one gazes from the summer sea <br /> On some far gossamer cloud, with straining eye, <br /> Fearing to see it vanish in the sky, <br />So, floating, wandering Cloud-Soul, I watch thee.<br /><br />Sidney Lanier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-wilhelmina/
