Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown: You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired; The daughter of a hundred earls, You are not one to be desired.

Her enchanted hair was the first gold,
and still she sits, young while the earth is old.

She was only eight years old, and still confused the way things should have been with the way they were.

Her name was called Lady Helena Herring and her age was 25 and she mated well with the earl.

She clad herself in a russet gown, She was no longer Lady Clare: She went by dale, and she went by down, With a single rose in her hair. The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought Leapt up from where she lay. Dropped her head in the maiden's hand. And followed her all the way.

Rich and rare were the gems she wore,
And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore.

She moved in cadenzas of golden light. She floated on the wind of a royal serenity.

Such was the texture of her marble.

[In a description of Laura Trevelyan.]

There sat a woman, whose wet tresses rolled On to the floor in waves of gleaming gold, Cast back from such a form as, erewhile shown To one poor shepherd, lighted up Troy town.

The bride was young and beautiful, the bridegroom stern and old,—
But the silken rein was hung with pearls, the housings bright with gold.

There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She started one day
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.

Here in the city she had gilded her nails. They shone. And she had put on a velvet dress, this soft red one, which was heavy. The buttons were in the form of seashells.

You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.