There is beauty in the gullies, beauty on the cliffs, beauty in sun and shade, In rocks and rivers, seas and plains, the earth is drowned in beauty. Beauty coileth with the water-snake, and is cradled in the shrewmouse's nest, She flitteth out with evening bats, and the soft mole hid her in his tunnel; The limpet is encamped upon the shore, and beauty not a stranger to his tent; The silvery dace and golden carp thread the rushes with her : She saileth into clouds with an eagle, she fluttereth into tulips with a humming-bird; The pasturing kine are of her company, and she prowleth with the leopard in his jungle. Moreover, for the reasonable world, its words, and acts, and speculation, For frail and fallen manhood, in every work and way, Beauty, wrecked and stricken, lingereth still among us, And morsels of that shattered sun are dropt upon the darkness. Beauty is as crystal in the torchlight, sparkling on the poet's page; She is seen in the tear of sorrow, and heard in the exuberance of mirth; disease. Science, in his secret laws, hath found out latent beauty, Sphere and square, and cone and curve, are fashioned by her rules: Beauty is dependence in the babe, a toothless tender nursling; Beauty is boldness in the boy, a curly rosy truant; There is none enchantment against beauty, Magician for all time, Beauty is conqueror of all, nor ever yet was found among the nations Who can wrestle against Sleep?—yet is that giant very gentleness. Ajax may rout a phalanx, but beauty shall enslave him single-handed: Pericles ruled Athens, yet is he the servant of Aspasia : Light were the labour, and often-told the tale, to count the victories of beauty, Helen, and Judith, and Omphale, and Thais, many a trophied name, And kindly stayed her step, and wept when she departed; When looking on some lovely face beneath the cloister's shade; Usury freed her without ransom: the buccaneer was gentle in her presence: Madness kissed her on the cheeek, and Idiocy brightened at her coming: Yea, the very cattle in the field, and hungry prowlers of the forest, With fawning homage greeted her, as beauty glided by. A welcome guest, unbidden, she is dear to every hearth; A glad spontaneous growth of friends are springing round her rest: consoled; Justice putteth up his sword at the tear of supplicating beauty, And Mercy, with indulgent haste, hath pardoned beauty's sin. For beauty is the substitute for all things, satisfying every absence,099910) The rich delirious cup, to make all else forgotten; I boat 4*5,910!I She also is the zest unto all things, enhancing every presence, 2% 17. În A The rare and precious ambergris, to quicken each perfume. O beauty, thou art eloquent; yea, though slow of tongue, 2 Lox lizo T Sages listen, sweet Corinna, to commend thy lips () of Ils Inila 9-9 'T potez) e edem etidori ban ; *i si dowong som H Friend and scholar, who, in charity, hast walked with me thus far, o brA We have wandered in a wilderness of sweets, tracking beauty's foot stepword 'robol zbor'd gotor stegs 9ri 9xing 6) musí 21, wojóti br A And ever as we rambled on among the tangled thicket, hipnoz died doy Many a startled thought hath tempted further roaming;iat diamteriq 95A Passion, sympathetic influence, might of imaginary halos, on noini-sa Many the like would lure aside, to hunt their wayward themes. il baJ And, look you!—from his ferny bed in yonder hazel coppice, A dappled hart hath flung aside the boughs and broke awayljed nem dost He is fleet and capricious as the zephyr, and with exulting bounds hoq A Hieth down a turfy lane between the sounding woods; boodusm ji su His neck is garlanded with flowers, his antlers hung with chaplets, Greece, the Roman province, nigh forgat her classic sculpture; The civilized tapering waist,—and the pendulous ears of the savage,— tropics, These shall all be reckoned beauty; and for weighty cause: First, for the latter; Providence in mercy tempereth taste by circumstance, So that Nature's must shall hit her creature's liking; Second, for the middle; though the foolishness of vanity seek to mar proportion, Still, defects in those we love shall soon be counted praise; Third, for the first; a chief and a princess, maimed or distorted from the cradle, Shall coax the flattery of slaves to imitate the great in their deformity; Hence groweth habit; and habits make a taste, And so shall servile zeal deface the types of beauty. Whiles Alexander conquered, crookedness was comely; And followers learn to praise the scars upon their leader's brow. Age plastereth her wrinkles, and is painted in the ruddiness of Youth. Until the general Taste depraved hath warped its sense of beauty. Each man hath a measure for himself, yet all shall coincide in much; Be it manhood's lustre, or the loveliness of woman, all would own its beauty, The Caffre and Circassian, Russians and Hindoos, the Briton, the Turk and Japanese. Not all alike, nor all at once, but each in proportion to intelligence, His purer state in morals, and a lesser grade in guilt : For the high standard of the beautiful is fixed in Reason's forum, There is a beauty of the body; the superficial polish of a statue, Dost thou count her beautiful?-even as a mere fair figure, Yet is this the pleasing trickery, that cheateth half the world, And few be they that rest uncaught, for many a twig is limed; And albeit fairness in the creature shall often co-exist with excellence, A man, spiritually keen, shall detect in surface beauty Those marring specks of evil, which the sensual cannot see ; Therefore is he proof against a face, unlovely to his likings, And common minds shall scorn the taste, that shrunk from sin's distortion. There is a beauty of the reason: grandly independent of externals, It looketh from the windows of the house, shining in the man triumphant. I have seen the broad blank face of some misshapen dwarf Lit on a sudden as with glory, the brilliant light of mind: Who then imagined him deformed? intelligence is blazing on his forehead, There is empire in his eye, and sweetness on his lip, and his brown cheek glittereth with beauty: And I have known some Nireus of the camp, a varnished paragon of chamberers, (7) Fine, elegant, and shapely, moulded as the master-piece of Phidias,Such an one, with intellects abased, have I noted crouching to the dwarf, Whilst his lovers scorn the fool whose beauty hath departed! |