Beauty

Italia! O Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty.

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms Which I gaze on so fondly today, Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms, Like fairy gifts fading away, Thou would’st still be ador’d as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will, And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still.

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth.

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud— We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colors a suffusion from that light.

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness.

O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware.

Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was white as leprosy, The nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she.

Oh, Brignal banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen.

The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the poet’s dream.

A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command. And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.

She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment’s ornament.

The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose.

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: 2 A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak A lasting inspiration, sanctified By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how; Instruct them how the mind of man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells.

Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.

She is a winsome wee thing, She is a handsome wee thing, She is a lo’esome wee thing,

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise. My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

O, my Luve is like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June. O, my Luve is like the melodie, That’s sweetly played in tune.

To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.