Mujer

"He looks for a beauty that is beyond beauty, something that words can evoke but not say. All romanticism, an aspiration to the infinite, is in this verse; and all symbolism: the ideal beauty, undefined, that can only be suggested. More rhythm than body, that form is feminine. It is nature and it is woman:

[from a poem by Rubén Darío]

Adornan verdes palmas el blanco peristilo;
los astros me han predicho la visión de la Diosa;
y en mi alma reposa la luz como reposa
el ave de la luna sobre un lago tranquilo.

[Green palms decorate the white arcade
The heavens have revealed to me the vision of the Goddess:
And in my soul rests the light as
The bird of the moon rests on the calm lake.]"

-Octavio Paz on the poems of Rubén Darío