Canto 29Like a white statue
Book 1. Part One - England and Baroda 1883 – 1898
Like a white statue made of lilies
Her eyes were hidden jewels beneath scabbards of black silk: her
shoulders moonlit mountain-slopes when they are coated with
new-fallen snow: her breasts two white apples odorous with the
5sweet fragrance of girlhood, her body a heap of silk in a queen’s
closet, her legs were marble pillars very clear-cut, her face ivory
flushed by the dawn.
He frowned on her like a dark cloud instinct with rain over
a tall white ship at sea.
10The full orb of her loveliness revealed as when the fleecy gown
is stripped from the shoulders of the moon and she stands naked
in heaven.
The moon of the three worlds.
Her gait was the swan’s in stateliness, the other’s wild and jocund
15as the sea-fowl, her hair windtost, her eyes sparkling like bubbles
in a wine-cup, her face slim and very girlish.