As pure as a pearl,
And as perfect: a noble and innocent girl.

The difference between you and her
(whom I to you did once prefer)
Is clear enough to settle:
She like a diamond shone, but you
Shine like an early drop of dew
Poised on a red rose petal.

The dew-drop carries in its eye
Mountain and forest, sea and sky,
With every change of weather;
Contrariwise, a diamond splits
The prospect into idle bits
That none can piece together.

Is not a dew-drop on a blade of grass more beautiful than a pearl set in gold? Is not a living spring, which gushes up before us, we know not whence, more beautiful than all the fountains of Versailles?

Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.

It made her pure, and those we love must be pure, otherwise we can't love them. But loving a person is also making her pure. (p. 189)

Es la imagen más pura de la mujer amada: la que aún no conocemos totalmente, la que se revelará, la que tiene en sí el único milagro viviente que existe en la tierra.

This Englishwoman is so refined
She has no bosom and no behind.

Bring me a languid woman, perfumed, young, </br> Her dusky body hung with dazzling gems </br> And strange, exotic iridescent stuffs — </br> Her wanton eyes like thirsty summer moons.

Earth’s noblest thing, — a woman perfected.

It chanced the other day that I secured a white water-lily, and a season I had waited for had arrived. It is an emblem of purity. It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime and muck of earth.

Pure at heart: to be like a flower that blooms as gloriously, brilliantly in a secluded wild wood, not seen and praised.

YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf,
I am the smaller one on its upper side,'
said the dewdrop to the lake.

A woman's love is like the morning dew. It's just as likely to settle on a horse turd as a rose.

Beauty like hers is genius.