BEAUTIFUL.
One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.—Psalm xxvii. 4.
When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth.—Psalm xxxix. 11.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.—Proverbs, xxxi. 30.
I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.—Ecclesiastes, iii. 10, 11.
Oh, what is Beauty’s power?
It flourishes and dies;
Will the cold earth its silence break.
To tell how soft, how smooth a cheek
Beneath its surface lies?
Mute, mute is all,
O’er Beauty’s fall;
Her praise resounds no more, when mantled in her pall.
The most beloved on earth
Not long survives to-day;
So music past is obsolete,
And yet ’twas sweet, ’twas passing sweet,
But now ’tis gone away.
Thus does the shade
In evening fade,
When in forsaken tomb the form beloved is laid.
H. K. White.
At Thy rebuke, the bloom
Of man’s vain beauty flies;
And grief shall, like a moth, consume
All that delights our eyes.
J. Montgomery.
A sinful soul possessed of many gifts,
A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,
A glorious devil, large in heart and brain.
That did love beauty only, (beauty seen
In all varieties of mould and mind,)
And knowledge for its beauty; or if good,
Good only for its beauty.
Tennyson.
The beautiful, the beautiful!
Where do we find it not?
It is an all-pervading grace,
And lighteth every spot.
It sparkles on the ocean-wave—
It glitters in the dew;
We see it in the glorious sky,
And in the flow’ret’s hue.
On mountain-top, in valley deep,
We find its presence there;
The beautiful, the beautiful!
It liveth every where.
The glories of the noontide-day,
The still and solemn night,
The changing seasons, all can bring
Their tribute of delight.
There’s beauty in the dancing beam
That brightens childhood’s eye,
And in the Christian’s parting glance,
Whose hope is fix’d on high.
And in the being whom our love
Hath chosen for its own,
How beautiful! how beautiful!
Is every look and tone.
’Twas in that glance that God threw o’er
The young created earth,
When he pronounced it “very good,”
The beautiful had birth.
Then who shall say this world is dull,
And all to sadness given,
While yet there lives on every side
The smile that came from heaven?
If so much loveliness is sent
To grace our earthly home,
How beautiful—how beautiful
Will be the world to come!
Anon.