The Michael Fields' poems tempt us to treat them as so much more Victorian verse wallpaper, a temptation one can fend off by looking up who the Michael Fields were. And (in this case, for instance), by attending to some things like:

• the crisp command of a technical, metrically contoured stanza-form
• the opening line's creation of a kind of looking-forward, anticipatory ekphrastic effect, to put at least a little interesting spin on the description of beauty
• the demanding enjambments: every stanza finishes with at least three enjambed lines, and the third stanza offers no punctuation whatsoever after 'Behold' in l. 18
• some of the threads of imagery, e.g. vow, saint (yet not casting rigid saintly shadow), praise, mystic, missal

Are the dove's secret springs in the lashes at the poem's close a distant echo of the Song of Songs?

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The lady I have vowed to paint
Has contour of a rose,
No rigid shadow of a saint
Upon the wall she throws;
Her tints so softly lie
Against the air they almost vie
With the sea's outline smooth against the sky.

To those whom damask hues beguile
Her praise I do not speak,
I find her colour in the smile
Warm on her warm, blond cheek :
Then to the eyes away
It spreads, those eyes of mystic gray
That with mirage of their own vision play.

Her hair, about her brow, burns bright.
Her tresses are the gold
That in a missal keeps the light
Solemn and pure. Behold
Her lashes' glimmerings
Have the dove's secret springs
Of amber sunshine when she spreads her wings.