Beauty

I heard the old, old men say, “All that’s beautiful drifts away Like the waters.”

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind delight.

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandaled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

How to keep—is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty… from vanishing away?

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

Glory be to God for dappled things.

I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy!

Francesca da Rimini, miminy, piminy, Je-ne-sais-quoi young man!

A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, Foot-in-the-grave young man!

Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band, If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand. And everyone will say, As you walk your flowery way, “If he’s content with a vegetable love, which would certainly not suit me, Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be!”

I reckon—when I count at all— First—Poets—Then the Sun— Then Summer—Then the Heaven of God— And then—the List is done— But, looking back—the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole— The Others look a needless Show— So I write—Poets—All—

I died for Beauty—but was scarce Adjusted in the Tomb When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining Room—

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

The song seraphically free Of taint of personality.

For singing till his heaven fills, ’Tis love of earth that he instills, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which over flows To lift us with him as he goes.

What do I care that you are good? Be beautiful! and be sad! 11

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

Perfumes, colors and sounds echo one another

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

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.

Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles.

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the northwest died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay.