Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONNETS FOR BEAUTY, by STANTON ARTHUR COBLENTZ


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONNETS FOR BEAUTY, by                    
First Line: Scatter no tears for beauty culled and slain
Last Line: Of that which steeps the heavens and earth in light.
Subject(s): Beauty


Scatter no tears for beauty culled and slain.
She dies as does the autumn. Time can lop
Only the stalks of her abundant crop,
But the deep roots must changelessly remain.
These bloomy woods the reaper shears like grain,
These spires and architraves that sag and drop,
Are but as grist in that eternal Shop
Which builds the lift and spread of hill and plain.

For as no song that poet ever sung
But has its model in the maker's heart,
Its parent, and its larger counterpart,
So crag and star and flower all have sprung
Out of that Master Pattern, ever young
Though worlds are swallowed like flame-riddled art.

I make no plea for beauty. She can speak
In her own language to the heart and eye
And if the music of the groves and sky,
And the blue radiance of bay and peak,
And art's harmonious transports are too weak
To rouse the spirit till the pulse leaps high,
Then how can any word of mine supply
Lanterns and wings for those that never seek?

No! not for beauty trumpet your appeal,
Though she stand lonely where the hermit prays --
Her rule is termless as the star-domed night!
But sigh for him whose hours are roofed with steel;
Who gropes in pits, and never sees the blaze
Of that which steeps the heavens and earth in light.





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