Beauty

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain!

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

 

[ Reply when asked, as an Oxford undergraduate, why he was staring raptly at a pair of vases on his mantelpiece :] Oh, would that I could live up tomy blue china!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

 

Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in light out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.

Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs and flaming hair, But Desire gratified Plants fruits of life and beauty there.

As the rain falls so does bathe every object of the world—

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Some say an army of cavalry or of infantry or a fleet of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is whatever one loves.

We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace .

We’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted—better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that.

Unkempt about those hedges blows

Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good.

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose— A Ribbon at a time—

Beauty is momentary in the mind—

When All My Five and Country Senses See.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness and pleasure. 4

And so they could see she was a real princess, because she had felt the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdowns.

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

Taste . . . is the only morality. . . . Tell me what you like, and I’ll tell you what you are.

London, thou art the flower of Cities all.

 

But the beauty is not the madness

Beauty holds more worth than gold.

 

These palms are greater than Versailles, for no man made them.