as in the present
case.

MEET WE NO ANGELS, PANSIE?

Came, on a Sabbath noon, my sweet,
In white, to find her lover;
The grass grew proud beneath her feet,
The green elm-leaves above her:--
Meet we no angels, Pansie?

She said, "We meet no angels now;"
And soft lights stream'd upon her;
And with white hand she touch'd a bough;
She did it that great honour:--
What! meet no angels, Pansie?

O sweet brown hat, brown hair, brown eyes,
Down-dropp'd brown eyes, so tender!
Then what said I? Gallant replies
Seem flattery, and offend her:--
But--meet no angels, Pansie?

The suggestion is obvious, that the maiden realizes to the lover's eye the
ideal of an angel. As she comes he asks her slyly,--for she has been to
the church--"Is it true that nobody ever sees real angels?" She answers
innocently, thinking him to be in earnest, "No--long ago people used to
see angels, but in these times no one ever sees them." He does not dare
tell her how beautiful she seems to him; but he suggests much more than
admiration by the tone of his protesting response to her answer: "What!
You cannot mean to say that there are no angels now?" Of course that is
the same as to say, "I see an angel now"--but the girl is much too
innocent to take the real and flattering meaning.

Wordsworth's portrait of the ideal woman is very famous; it was written
about his own wife though that fact would not be guessed from the poem.
The last stanza is the most famous, but we had better quote them all.

She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
En