Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONNETS TO MIRANDA: 9, by WILLIAM WATSON



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SONNETS TO MIRANDA: 9, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: If all the thoughts of all the minds of men
Last Line: And beauty perfect from the hands of god.
Alternate Author Name(s): Watson, John William
Subject(s): Beauty; Reason; Sea; Thought; Intellect; Rationalism; Brain; Mind; Intellectuals; Ocean; Thinking


IF all the thoughts of all the minds of men
At last were stilled in night for evermore;
If all the sea should fade from all the shore,
And all the earth be as a dried-up fen;
Would not the Maker and Destroyer then
Look backward half-remorseful, and deplore
The ruined world Himself might not restore,
His own creation, withered from His ken?

Or would such things as here did bear in them
Intenser life-fire than the rest attain,
Live on, as at their highest, in spheres untrod
By meaner Being? -- The might of Shakespeare's brain;
The vast Compassion born at Bethlehem;
And Beauty perfect from the hands of God.





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