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The problem beauty poses is revealed
there: be it roses, or an evening scene,
there is a fixity indulged, repealed
by fading of the same; and this is seen
as beauty’s passage, images preserved
in concept or in pictures, that makes it art,
a stab at permanence, the right reserved
for life’s sake, fashioning a counterpart
to time’s remorseless cycle of decay:
the things of beauty make our world ideal,
not as it is; and no great leap to say,
that as the blood will rush, our minds to thrill
at beauty’s preternatural forms each day,
the life hereafter proves itself that way. |
