The Cottage Girl Poem by Thomas Holley Chivers

'She seemed a splendid angel newly drest,
Save wings, for Heaven.' — Keats


Her tender breasts were like to snow-white doves
Upon one willow bough at calm of even,
Telling each other, side by side, their loves,
In a diapason tones as soft as heaven.
And as the soft winds, from the flowery grove,
Sway them thus sitting on that willow bough,
At every breath—at every sigh of love—
They undulate upon her bosom now.

Two dove-like spirits on her eyelids knelt,
And weighed them gently, covering half her eyes,
Whose soul in their own azure seemed to melt,
And mingle, as the sunlight with the skies.
Her eyes were like two violets bathed in dew,
In which each lash was mirrored dark within,
And in some lake, reflecting heaven so blue,
The willow boughs long, languid limbs are seen.

As God's celestial look is far too bright
For angel's gaze in heaven, if not kept dim,
And partly shorn of its excessive light,
By the broad pinions of the Cherubim;
So, these two spirits, one on each fair lid,
Let down the lash-fringed curtains to conceal,
And keep but half that heavenly glory hid,
Which it were death to mortals to reveal.