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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WOMAN'S BEAUTY, by LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty? Last Line: And woman's beauty is the flame therein. Subject(s): Beauty | |||
What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty? Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all The world, but an awning scaffolded amid The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty? The East and West kneel down to thee, the North And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear The load of fourfold space. As yellow morn Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea, Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears Indeed, and blitheness, murder and lust and love, Whatever has been passionate in clay, Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body The yearnings of all men measured and told, Insatiate endless agonies of desire Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape! What beauty is there, but thou makest it? How is earth good to look on, woods and fields, The season's garden, and the courageous hills, All this green raft of earth moored in the seas? The manner of the sun to ride the air, The stars God has imagined for the night? What's this behind them, that we cannot near, Secret still on the point of being blabbed, The ghost in the world that flies from being named? Where do they get their beauty from, all these? They do but glaze a lantern lit for man, And woman's beauty is the flame therein. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...VARIATIONS: 14 by CONRAD AIKEN DIVINELY SUPERFLUOUS BEAUTY by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE BEAUTY OF THINGS by ROBINSON JEFFERS HOPE IS NOT FOR THE WISE by ROBINSON JEFFERS LIFE FROM THE LIFELESS by ROBINSON JEFFERS REARMAMENT by ROBINSON JEFFERS SHANE ONEILLS CAIRN by ROBINSON JEFFERS EPILOGUE FROM EMBLEMS OF LOVE by LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE |
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