The Virgin Considered As A Picture

Her unawed face, whose pose so long assumed Is touched with what reality we feel, Bends to itself and, to itself resumed, Restores a tender fiction to the real. And in her artful posture movement lies Whose timeless motion flesh must so conceal; Yet what her pose conceals we might surmise And might pretend to gather from her eyes The final motion flesh gives up to art. But slowly, if we watch her long enough, The nerves grow subtler, and she moves apart Into a space too dim with time and blood For our set eyes to follow true enough, Or nerves to guess about her, if they would.