The speaker in Anna Wickham’s “The Supreme Courtesy” describes her man as a fine steel blade—strong, subtle, beautifully made, and glowing with a cold, blue-white power. She admires his dangerous edge: he can be “cruel-quick,” yet touching him feels as pleasant as fine fabric. The pleasure and the threat are tangled together. She says that even a wound from him would be a kind of gift, and she would die happy at such “keen mastery.”
The mood is intimate, sharp, and slightly unsettling. It is a love poem built on admiration for danger and skill rather than softness. The speaker does not want safety; she wants intensity, precision, and the thrill of being close to something powerful enough to hurt her.