Beauty

In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head.

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew— The conscious stone to beauty grew.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

Rank is a great beautifier.

I met a lady in the meads Full beautiful, a faery’s child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty’s self.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude!

When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” 1 —that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter.

Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape?

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely.

A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form.

The women pardon’d all except her face.

There be none of Beauty’s daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me.

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow’d to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.