A second warning, nor unheeded. Yet <br />The thought appealed to me as no strange thing, <br />Pure though I was, that love impure had set <br />Its seal on that fair woman in her Spring. <br />Her broken beauty did not mar her grace <br />In form or spirit. Nay, it rather moved. <br />It seemed a natural thing for that gay face <br />It should have known and suffered and been loved. <br />It kindled in me, too, to view it thus, <br />A mood of daring which was more than mine, <br />And made my shamefaced heart leap valorous, <br />And fired its courage to a zeal divine. <br />All this, in one short instant, as I gazed <br />Into her eyes, admiring, yet amazed.<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/esther-a-sonnet-sequence-xiii/
