II

WOMAN AS A SUPERNATURAL BEING


The boy's first hushed enchantment, blent with a sort of religious awe,
as in his earliest love affair he awakens to the delicious mystery we
call woman, a being half fairy and half flower, made out of moonlight
and water lilies, of elfin music and thrilling fragrance, of divine
whiteness and softness and rustle as of dewy rose gardens, a being of
unearthly eyes and terribly sweet marvel of hair; such, too, through
life, and through the ages, however confused or overlaid by use and
wont, is man's perpetual attitude of astonishment before the apparition
woman.

Though she may work at his side, the comrade of his sublunary
occupations, he never, deep down, thinks of her as quite real. Though
his wife, she remains an apparition, a being of another element, an
Undine. She is never quite credible, never quite loses that first nimbus
of the supernatural.

This is true not merely for poets; it is true for all men, though, of
course, all men may not be conscious of its truth, or realize the truth
in just this way. Poets, being endowed with exceptional sensitiveness of
feeling and expression, say the wonderful thing in the wonderful way,
bring to it words more nearly adequate than others can bring; but it is