Rachel, the beautiful (as she was called),
Despised our mother Leah, for that she
Was tender-ey’d, lean-favor’d, and did lack
The pulpy ripeness swelling the white skin
To sleek proportions beautiful and round,
With wrinkled joints so fruitful to the eye.
All this is fair: and yet we know it true
That ‘neath a pomane breast and snowy side
A heart of guile and falsehood may be hid,
As well as where the soil is deeper tinct.
So here with this same Rachel was it found:
The dim blue-laced veins on either brow,
Neath the transparent skin meandering,
That with the silver-leaved lily vied;
Her full dark eye, whose brightness glisten’d through
The sable lashes soft as camel-hair;
Her slanting head curv’d like the maiden moon
And hung with hair luxuriant as a vine
And blacker than a storm; her rounded ear
Turn’d like a shell upon some golden shore;
Her whispering foot that carried all her weight,
Nor left its little pressure on the sand;
Her lips as drowsy poppies, soft and red,
Gathering a dew from her escaping breath;
Her voice melodious, mellow, deep, and dear,
Lingering like sweet music in the ear;
Her neck o’ersoften’d like to unsunn’d curd;
Her tapering fingers rounded to a point;
The silken softness of her veined hand;
Her dimpled knuckles answering to her chin;
And teeth like honeycombs o’ the wilderness:
All these did tend to a bad proof in her.
For armed thus in beauty she did steal
The eye of Jacob to her proper self,
Engross’d his time, and kept him by her side,
Casting on Leah indifference and neglect;
Whereat great Heaven took our mother’s part
And struck young Rachel with a barrenness
While she bore children: thus the matter went;
Till Rachel, feeling guilty of her fault,
Turn’d to some penitence, which Heaven heard;
And then she bore this Joseph, who must and does,
Inherit toward the children all the pride
And scorn his mother had towards our mother:
Wherefore he suffers in our just rebuke.
(Charles Jeremiah Wells)
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Based on Topics: Time Poems, Fairness Poems, Beauty Poems, Mothers Poems, Hair Poems, Pride Poems, Children Poems, Emotions Poems, Self PoemsBased on Keywords: engross, barrenness, vied, tapering, curd, pulpy, curv, tinct, leah, honeycombs, unsunn