Explore "Nature's Lady" by George Eliot on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Three years she grew in sun and shower, / Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower / On earth was never sown; / This child I to myself will take, / She shall be mine, and I will make / A lady of my own.
"Myself will to my darling be / Both law and impulse: and with me / The Girl, in rock and plain, / In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, / Shall feel an overseeing power / To kindle or restrain.
"She shall be sportive as the fawn / That wild with glee across the lawn / Or up the mountain springs; / And hers shall be the breathing balm, / And hers the silence and the calm, / Of mute insensate things.
"The floating clouds their state shall lend / To her; for her the willows bend; / Nor shall she fail to see / Even in the motions of the storm / Grace that shall mould the maiden's form / By silent sympathy.
"The stars of midnight shall be dear / To her; and she shall lean her ear / In many a secret place / Where rivulets dance their wayward round, / And beauty born of murmuring sound / Shall pass into her face."