Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BEAUTY OF THE WORLD, by FRANK WILMOT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BEAUTY OF THE WORLD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Not what men see
Last Line: To nobleness in small things, act of grace.
Alternate Author Name(s): Maurice, Furnley
Subject(s): Beauty


NOT what men see,
Not what they draw from the spread
Of hills looming in cloud --
Not this makes them proud;
But what they can hold in fee
With difficulty and dread
To tell to their hearts in pain
Over and over again.

The terror of Beauty is this:
That something may find the abyss,
Some fact of miracle that you have seen
And no one ever know it ever has been
Nor what its miracle would mean.

The spacious suns
Flow through the heart as water runs,
Known and not held,
Leaving no trace.
O'er Earth's wind-ruffled face
Goes the sun-shuddering air ...
Of all the Beauty that rides
Violent or velvet-footed everywhere,
So little abides --
The hunger of life's unquelled!
So rarely, rarely can these vistas draw
Deep in the spirit their trails of speechless awe!

Languid upon their slopes of silvery death
Dead giants sway to the noon breezes' breath;
How these things torture the soul!
Moonlight that loiters on a mossy bole;
Sunglow that makes a pillow of a stone;
The drifts of forest light;
Trees in a stormy night;
Bush echoes; ocean's unresolving tone,
Or groups of falling chords melting to one;
The softness of a kookaburra's crown
The breeze puts softly up and softly down;
His eyes of love that almost humanly speak
Peering in softness o'er that murderous beak!

Gardens will blossom forever, breaking the spirit,
All your endeavour be guerdonless, trammelled with dross;
Vain the accomplishing ardours the races inherit
Till true men open their mouths, confessing their loss.
Beauty strides like a warrior, tortures the passions,
Troubles the soul with its mountainous loveliness;
Vain what we yearn toward, vain all the deft hand fashions
Till, turning toward the ranges, men confess
That they shall trouble overmuch
For things they'll never touch,
That forests they move among
Shall always elude their yearning
And all their passion be as the returning
Silence when the thrush has sung.

When, folded on gully and crown,
The west light spreads the shadows down
And daylight dies on unapproachable hills,
The breathing silence storms us, the heart fills,
We're sated with sublimity....
But, having tramped those tracks and crossed those rills
Nearing their slopes, the mountains cease to be.

Full well we know
Must pass, must pass away
This joy, that woe;
And learn full well in quiet dismay
That Beauty cannot stay.
But this content for which we vainly grope,
This desperate reach for miracle may give place
By an intenser waiting, a more passionate hope,
To nobleness in small things, act of grace.





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