"breathed your cheeks with down of Gold"

[bloomcountry]

What is the meaning of "breathe" here?

By what laws other should we hold
Than those they leave without repeal,
That breathed your cheeks with down of Gold
And shinned my horse with rods of Steel?


Roy Campbell: "Vaquero to his Wife". See:
http://books.google.es/books?id=mLltbHRZ2hwC&dq=mithraic+emblems&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=1X1Ng0Vmxv&sig=AKtgAufUUrxzwx6dNyJauHTxWOs&hl=es&ei=63F3Sum6DIWZjAekyKC9Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

[MichaelW]

Yeow. You seem to be getting through "Mithraic Emblems" pretty rapidly.

Breathed as it means, with an overtone of the breath of Creation (Genesis 2:7)

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;and man became a living soul."

So one can talk of "breathing life" into something, creating it, or in this case of the Vaquero's wife of her being created with down on her cheeks by the most ancient and original of laws.