| On Beauty | |
| And a poet said, "Speak to us of Beauty." | |
| Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? | |
| And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? | |
| The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle. | |
| Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us." | |
| And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread. | |
| Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us." | |
| The tired and the weary say, "beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit. | |
| Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow." | |
| But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains, | |
| And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions." | |
| At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east." | |
| And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset." | |
| In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills." | |
| And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair." | |
| All these things have you said of beauty. | |
| Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied, | |
| And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. | |
| It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, | |
| But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. | |
| It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, | |
| But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. | |
| It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw, | |
| But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight. | |
| People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. | |
| But you are life and you are the veil. | |
| Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. | |
| But you are eternity and your are the mirror. |