She Is Not Fair To Outward View
As many maidens be,
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me;
O, then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light!
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me;
O, then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light!
But now her looks are coy and cold,
To mine they ne'er reply,
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.
About this poem
Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849), the eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote this short lyric, one of the most anthologised English love songs of the nineteenth century.
The speaker admits that his beloved is not beautiful “to outward view”; her loveliness appeared only when she smiled at him. Now she is “coy and cold,” but he still sees the “love-light in her eye.” The closing couplet turns the poem into a compliment: “Her very frowns are fairer far / Than smiles of other maidens are.” Its simple stanzas show that beauty lies in the eye of the one who loves.