A face upturned towards the midnight sky,
Pale in the glimmer of the pale starlight,
And all around the black and boundless night,
And voices of the winds which bode and cry.
A childish face, but grave with curves that lie
Ready to breathe in laughter or in tears,
Shadowed with something of the future years
That makes one sorrowful, I know not why.
O still, small face, like a white petal torn
From a wild rose by autumn winds and flung
On some dark stream the hurrying waves among:
By what strange fates and whither art thou borne?

Laura had many poems written to her from many lovers. My daughter
Elizabeth Bibesco's godfather, Godfrey Webb--a conspicuous member
of the Souls, not long since dead--wrote this of her:

"HALF CHILD, HALF WOMAN."

Tennyson's description of Laura in 1883:

"Half child, half woman"--wholly to be loved
By either name she found an easy way
Into my heart, whose sentinels all proved
Unfaithful to their trust, the luckless day
She entered there. "Prudence and reason both!
Did you not question her? How was it pray
She so persuaded you?" "Nor sleep nor sloth,"
They cried, "o'ercame us then, a CHILD at play
Went smiling past us, and then turning round