I have seen Beauty; I have sensed her rhythms, Graceful as Venus, lithe as Trojan Helen, Virgin as Psyche, stark as the mermaid's form; Seen her, like Cleopatra, sensuous, bold, In her patrician pride and purple robes; Seen her, demure, in sober Quaker gray, Firm as austerity, placid as peace; Seen her in gypsy guise, nut-brown and free; Seen her in rouged Delilahs of the street, Seen her in virtuous wife and laughing maid,— I have seen Beauty in these various rhythms. I have seen Beauty; I have heard her speak: Heard her in rolling thunder on the hills And echoing back from rocky cliff or ridge; Heard her in murmurings of the spring-fed brook; Heard her sad cadence in the sighing wind— Her slumbrous monotone of pattering rain; Heard her in fury roaring down the storm, Wind-whipped and raving and with streaming hair; Heard her on beating pinions boldly fan Azures the hawks inhabit, and she sounds In all the rounded accents of man's tongue When heart gropes out to heart or soul to soul. I have seen Beauty in unnumbered forms; She points the slender spire, colors the vase, Patterns the urn, the shaft of stone, and breathes Through the cathedral's nave; she grandly talks From mountains, and she speaks from pyramids; And where men sweat she stammers from the great Industrial buildings—rolls in billowy waves Of smoke from factories' funnels; the squat forms Of commerce counterfeit her semblance where Anemic males and languid females hive, Telling the prisoned efforts of the hour. Beauty in sky, in cloud, in grass, in heaven And on the soil—in lakes and rivers and The multitudinous denizens of the deeps; But mostly in the minds and high ideals Whose eyes outride the bounds of time and space To fields of asphodel and amaranth. Yes, I have looked on Beauty ... heard her song; Now I would journey, for my ears are full And my tired vision dull with much beholding;— Lo, I would @3live@1 with Beauty and would be Soul of her soul and heart to heart with her Till every pulse-beat throb her rich refrain And every breath be burdened with Desire Deep welling from her glorious life in me! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MRS. SIBLEY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS PORPHYRIA'S LOVER by ROBERT BROWNING LEISURE by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES THE REVEILLE by FRANCIS BRET HARTE A LIFE-LESSON by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY THE BALLAD OF BAZILE BORGNE by IDA COLE BARTLATT |