"Before The World Was Made If I make the lashes dark and the eyes more bright and the lips more scarlet, or ask if all be right from mirror after mirror, no vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made. What if I look upon a man as though on my beloved, and my blood be cold the while and my heart unmoved? Why should he think me cruel or that he is betrayed? I'd have him love the thing that was before the world was made."

Source: 1928 'A Woman Young and Old', part 2 'Before the World was Made', stanza 1. Collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933).