The Harp-Weaver/Love is not blind

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

III

Love is not blind. I see with single eye
Your ugliness and other women’s grace.
I know the imperfection of your face,—
The eyes too wide apart, the brow too high
For beauty. Learned from earliest youth am I
In loveliness, and cannot so erase
Its letters from my mind, that I may trace
You faultless, I must love until I die.
More subtle is the sovereignty of love:
So am I caught that when I say, “Not fair,”
’Tis but as if I said, “Not here—not there—
Not risen—not writing letters.” Well I know
What is this beauty men are babbling of;
I wonder only why they prize it so.