Proverbial Philosophy / The First and Second Series

by Unknown

OF BEAUTY.

Thou mightier than Manoah's son, whence is thy great strength,

And wherein the secret of thy craft, O charmer charming wisely?—

For thou art strong in weakness, and in artlessness well skilled,

Constant in the multitude of change, and simple amidst intricate complexity.

Folly's shallow lip can ask the deepest question,

And many wise in many words should answer, what is beauty?—

Who shall separate the hues that flicker on a dying dolphin,

Or analyse the jewelled lights that deck the peacock's train,

Or shrewdly mix upon a palette the tints of an iridescent spar,

Or set in rank the wandering shades about a watered silk?

For beauty is intangible, vague, ill to be defined;

She hath the coat of a chameleon, changing while we watch it.

Strangely woven is the web, disorderly yet harmonious,

A glistering robe of mingled mesh, that may not be unravelled.

It is shot with heaven's blue, the soul of summer skies,

And twisted strings of light, the mind of noonday suns,

And ruddy gleams of life, that roll along the veins,

A coat of many colours, running curiously together.

There is threefold beauty for man; twofold beauty for the animal;

And the beauty of inanimates is single: body, temper, spirit.

Multiplied in endless combination, issue the changeable results;

Each class verging on the other twain, with imperceptible gradation;

And every individual in each having his propriety of difference,

So that the meanest of creation bringeth in a tribute of the beautiful.

Yea, from the worst in favour shineth out a fitness of design,

The patent mark of beauty, its Maker's name imprest.

For the great Creator's seal is set to all His works;

Its quarterings are Attributes of praise, and all the shield is Beauty:

So, that heraldic blazon is Creation's common signet;

And the universal family of life goeth in the colours of its Lord:

But each one, as a several son, shall bear those arms with a difference;

Beauty, various in phase, and similar in seeming oppositions.

The coins of old Rome were struck with a diversity for each,

Barely two be found alike, in every Cæsar's image:

So, note thou the seals, ranged round the charters of the Universe,

The finger of God is the stamp upon them all, but each hath its separate variety.

Beauty, theme of innocence, how may guilt discourse thee?

Let holy angels sing thy praise, for man hath marred thy visage.

Still the maimed torso of a Theseus can gladden taste with its proportions;

Though sin hath shattered every limb, how comely are the fragments!

And music leaveth on the ear a memory of sweet sounds;

And broken arches charm the sight with hints of fair completeness.

So, while humbled at the ruin, be thou grateful for the relics;

Go forth, and look on all around with kind uncaptious eye:

Freely let us wander through these unfrequented ways,

And talk of glorious beauty, filling all the world.

For beauty hideth everywhere, that Reason's child may seek her,

And having found the gem of price, may set it in God's crown.

Beauty nestleth in the rosebud, or walketh the firmament with planets,

She is heard in the beetle's evening hymn, and shouteth in the matins of the sun;

The cheek of the peach is glowing with her smile, her splendour blazeth in the lightning,

She is the dryad of the woods, the naiad of the streams;

Her golden hair hath tapestried the silkworm's silent chamber,

And to her measured harmonies the wild waves beat in time;

With tinkling feet at eventide she danceth in the meadow,

Or, like a Titan, lieth stretched athwart the ridgy Alps;

She is rising, in her veil of mist, a Venus from the waters,—

Men gaze upon the loveliness,—and lo, it is beautiful exceedingly;

She, with the might of a Briareus, is dragging down the clouds upon the mountain,—

Men look upon the grandeur,—and lo, it is excellent in glory.

For I judge that beauty and sublimity be but the lesser and the great,

Sublime, as magnified to giants, and beautiful, diminished into fairies.

It were a false fancy to solve all beauty by desire,

It were a lowering thought to expound sublimity by dread.

Cowardly men with trembling hearts have feared the furious storm,

Nor felt its thrilling beauty; but is it then not beautiful?

And careless men, at summer's eve, have loved the dimpled waves;

O that smile upon the seas,—hath it no sublimity?

Dost thou nothing know of this,—to be awed at woman's beauty?

Nor, with exhilarated heart, to hail the crashing thunder?

Thou hast much to learn, that never found a fearfulness in flowers;

Thou hast missed of joy, that never basked in beauties of the terrible.

Show me an enthusiast in aught; he hath noted one thing narrowly,

And lo, his keenness hath detected the one dear hiding place of beauty:

Then he boasteth, simple soul, flattered by discovery,

Fancying that no science else can show so fair and precious:

He hath found a ray of light, and cherisheth the treasure in his closet,

Mocking at those larger minds, that bathe in floods of noon;

Lo, what a jewel hath he gotten,—this is the monopolist of beauty,—

And lightly heeding all beside, he poured his yearnings thitherward:

Be it for love, or for learning, habit, art, or nature,

Exclusive thought is all the cause of this particular zeal.

But like intensity of fitness, kind and skilful beauty,

So pleasant to his mind in one thing, filleth all beside:

From the waking minute of a chrysalis, to the perfect cycle of chronology,

From the centipede's jointed armour to the mammoth's fossil ribs,

From the kingfisher's shrill note, to the cataract's thundering bass,

From the greensward's grateful hues, to the fascinating eye of woman,

Beauty, various in all things, setteth up her home in each,

Shedding graciously around an omnipresent smile.

There is beauty in the rolling clouds, and placid shingle beach,

In feathery snows, and whistling winds, and dun electric skies;

There is beauty in the rounded woods, dank with heavy foliage,

In laughing fields, and dinted hills, the valley and its lake;

There is beauty in the gullies, beauty on the cliffs, beauty in sun and shade,

In rocks and rivers, seas and plains,—the earth is drowned in beauty.

Beauty coileth with the watersnake, and is cradled in the shrewmouse's nest,

She flitteth out with evening bats, and the soft mole hid her in his tunnel;

The limpet is encamped upon the shore, and beauty not a stranger to his tent;

The silvery dace and golden carp thread the rushes with her:

She saileth into clouds with an eagle, she fluttereth into tulips with a humming bird;

The pasturing kine are of her company, and she prowleth with the leopard in his jungle.

Moreover, for the reasonable world, its words, and acts, and speculations,

For frail and fallen manhood, in his every work and way,

Beauty, wrecked and stricken, lingereth still among us,

And morsels of that shattered sun are dropt upon the darkness.

Yea, with savages and boors, the mean, the cruel, and besotted,

Ever in extenuating grace hide some relics of the beautiful.

Gleams of kindness, deeds of courage, patience, justice, generosity,

Truth welcomed, knowledge prized, rebukes taken with contrition,

All, in various measure, have been blest with some of these,

And never yet hath lived the man, utterly beggared of the beautiful.

Beauty is as crystal in the torchlight, sparkling on the poet's page;

Virgin honey of Hymettus, distilled from the lips of the orator;

A savour of sweet spikenard, anointing the hands of liberality;

A feast of angels' food set upon the tables of religion.

She is seen in the tear of sorrow, and heard in the exuberance of mirth;

She goeth out early with the huntsman, and watcheth at the pillow of disease.

Science in his secret laws hath found out latent beauty,

Sphere and square, and cone and curve, are fashioned by her rules:

Mechanism met her in his forces, fancy caught her in its flittings,

Day is lightened by her eyes, and her eyelids close upon the night.

Beauty is dependence in the babe, a toothless tender nurseling;

Beauty is boldness in the boy, a curly rosy truant;

Beauty is modesty and grace in fair retiring girlhood;

Beauty is openness and strength in pure high-minded youth:

Man, the noble and intelligent, gladdeneth earth with beauty,

And woman's beauty sunneth him, as with a smile from heaven.

There is none enchantment against beauty, Magician for all time,

Whose potent spells of sympathy have charmed the passive world:

Verily, she reigneth a Semiramis; there is no might against her;

The lords of every land are harnessed to her triumph.

Beauty is conqueror of all, nor ever yet was found among the nations

That iron-moulded mind, full proof against her power.

Beauty, like a summer's day, subdueth by sweet influences;

Who can wrestle against Sleep?—yet is that giant, very gentleness.

Ajax may rout a phalanx, but beauty shall enslave him single-handed;

Pericles ruled Athens, yet he is the servant of Aspasia:

Light were the labour, and often-told the tale, to count the victories of beauty,—

Helen, and Judith, and Omphale, and Thais, many a trophied name.

At a glance the misanthrope was softened, and repented of his vows,

When Beauty asked, he gave, and banned her—with a blessing;

The cold ascetic loved the smile that lit his dismal cell,

And kindly stayed her step, and wept when she departed;

The bigot abbess felt her heart gush with a mother's feeling,

When looking on some lovely face beneath the cloister's shade;

Usury freed her without ransom; the buccaneer was gentle in her presence;

Madness kissed her on the cheek, and Idiotcy brightened at her coming:

Yea, the very cattle in the field, and hungry prowlers of the forest

With fawning homage greeted her, as Beauty glided by.

A welcome guest unbidden, she is dear to every hearth;

A glad spontaneous growth of friends is springing round her rest:

Learning sitteth at her feet, and Idleness laboureth to please her,

Folly hath flung aside his bells, and leaden Dulness gloweth;

Prudence is rash in her defence; Frugality filleth her with riches;

Despair came to her for counsel; and Bereavement was glad when she consoled;

Justice putteth up his sword at the tear of supplicating beauty,

And Mercy, with indulgent haste, hath pardoned beauty's sin.

For beauty is the substitute for all things, satisfying every absence,

The rich delirious cup to make all else forgotten:

She also is the zest unto all things, enhancing every presence,

The rare and precious ambergris, to quicken each perfume.

O beauty, thou art eloquent; yea, though slow of tongue,

Thy breast, fair Phryne, pleaded well before the dazzled judge:

O beauty, thou art wise; yea, though teaching falsely,

Sages listen, sweet Corinna, to commend thy lips;

O beauty, thou art ruler; yea, though lowly as a slave,

Myrrha, that imperial brow is monarch of thy lord;

O beauty, thou art winner; yea, though halting in the race,

Hippodame, Camilla, Atalanta,—in gracefulness ye fascinate your umpires;

O beauty, thou art rich; yea, though clad in russet,

Attalus cannot boast his gold against the wealth of beauty;

O beauty, thou art noble; yea, though Esther be an exile,

Set her up on high, ye kings, and bow before the majesty of beauty!

Friend and scholar, who, in charity, hast walked with me thus far,

We have wandered in a wilderness of sweets, tracking beauty's footsteps:

And ever as we rambled on among the tangled thicket,

Many a startled thought hath tempted further roaming:

Passion, sympathetic influence, might of imaginary haloes,—

Many the like would lure aside, to hunt their wayward themes.

And, look you!—from his ferny bed in yonder hazel coppice,

A dappled hart hath flung aside the boughs and broke away;

He is fleet and capricious as the zephyr, and with exulting bounds

Hieth down a turfy lane between the sounding woods;

His neck is garlanded with flowers, his antlers hung with chaplets,

And rainbow-coloured ribbons stream adown his mottled flanks:

Should we follow?—foolish hunters, thus to chase afoot,—

Who can track the airy speed and doubling wiles of Taste?

For the estimates of human beauty, dependent upon time and clime,

Manifold and changeable, are multiplied the more by strange gregarious fashion:

And notable ensamples in the great turn to epidemics in the lower,

So that a nation's taste shall vary with its rulers.

Stern Egypt, humbled to the Greek, fancied softer idols;

Greece, the Roman province, nigh forgat her classic sculpture;

Rome, crushed beneath the Goth, loved his barbarian habits;

And Alaric, with his ruffian horde, is tamed by silken Rome.

Columbia's flattened head, and China's crumpled feet,—

The civilized tapering waist,—and the pendulous ears of the savage,—

The swollen throat among the mountains, and an ebon skin beneath the tropics,—

These shall all be reckoned beauty: and for weighty cause.

First, for the latter: Providence in mercy tempereth taste by circumstance,

So that Nature's must shall hit her creature's liking;

Second, for the middle: though the foolishness of vanity seek to mar proportion,

Still, defects in those we love shall soon be counted praise;

Third, for the first: a chief, and a princess, maimed or distorted from the cradle

Shall coax the flattery of slaves to imitate the great in their deformity:

Hence groweth habit: and habits make a taste,

And so shall servile zeal deface the types of beauty.

Whiles Alexander conquered, crookedness was comely:

And followers learn to praise the scars upon their leader's brow.

Youth hath sought to flatter age by mimicking grey hairs;

Age plastereth her wrinkles, and is painted in the ruddiness of Youth.

Fashion, the parasite of Rank, apeth faults and failings,

Until the general Taste depraved hath warped its sense of beauty.

Each man hath a measure for himself, yet all shall coincide in much;

A perfect form of human grace would captivate the world:

Be it manhood's lustre, or the loveliness of woman, all would own its beauty,

The Caffre and Circassian, Russians and Hindoos, the Briton, the Turk and Japanese.

Not all alike, nor all at once, but each in proportion to intelligence,

His purer state in morals, and a lesser grade in guilt:

For the high standard of the beautiful is fixed in Reason's forum,

And sins, and customs, and caprice, have failed to break it down:

And reason's standard for the creature pointeth three perfections,

Frame, knowledge, and the feeling heart, well and kindly mingled;

A fair dwelling, furnished wisely, with a gentle tenant in it,—

This is the glory of humanity: thou hast seen it seldom.

There is a beauty for the body; the superficial polish of a statue,

The symmetry of form and feature delicately carved and painted.

How bright in early bloom the Georgian sitteth at her lattice,

How softened off in graceful curves her young and gentle shape:

Those dark eyes, lit by curiosity, flash beneath the lashes,

And still her velvet cheek is dimpled with a smile.

Dost thou count her beautiful?—even as a mere fair figure,

A plastic image, little more,—the outer garb of woman:

Yea,—and thus far it is well; but Reason's hopes are higher,—

Can he sate his soul on a scantling third of beauty?

Yet is this the pleasing trickery, that cheateth half the world,

Nature's wise deceit to make up waste in life;

And few be they that rest uncaught, for many a twig is limed;

Where is the wise among a million, that took not form for beauty?

But watch it well; for vanity and sin, malice, hate, suspicion,

Louring as clouds upon the countenance, will disenchant its charms.

The needful complexity of beauty claimeth mind and soul,

Though many coins of foul alloy pass current for the true:

And albeit fairness in the creature shall often co-exist with excellence,

Yet hath many an angel shape been tenanted by fiends.

A man, spiritually keen, shall detect in surface beauty

Those marring specks of evil which the sensual cannot see;

Therefore is he proof against a face, unlovely to his likings,

And common minds shall scorn the taste, that shrunk from sin's distortion.

There is a beauty for the reason; grandly independent of externals,

It looketh from the windows of the house, shining in the man triumphant.

I have seen the broad blank face of some misshapen dwarf

Lit on a sudden as with glory, the brilliant light of mind:

Who then imagined him deformed? intelligence is blazing on his forehead,

There is empire in his eye, and sweetness on his lip, and his brown cheek glittereth with beauty:

And I have known some Nireus of the camp, a varnished paragon of chamberers,

Fine, elegant, and shapely, moulded as the master-piece of Phidias,—

Such an one, with intellects abased, have I noted crouching to the dwarf,

Whilst his lovers scorn the fool, whose beauty hath departed!

And there is a beauty for the spirit; mind in its perfect flowering,

Fragrant, expanded into soul, full of love and blessed.

Go to some squalid couch, some famishing death-bed of the poor;

He is shrunken, cadaverous, diseased;—there is here no beauty of the body:

Never hath he fed on knowledge, nor drank at the streams of science,

He is of the common herd, illiterate;—there is here no beauty of the reason:

But lo! his filming eye is bright with love from heaven,

In every look it beameth praise, as worshipping with seraphs;

What honeycomb is hived upon his lips, eloquent of gratitude and prayer,—

What triumph shrined serene upon that clammy brow,

What glory flickering transparent under those thin cheeks,—

What beauty in his face!—Is it not the face of an angel?

Now, of these three, infinitely mingled and combined,

Consisteth human beauty, in all the marvels of its mightiness:

And forth from human beauty springeth the intensity of Love;

Feeling, thought, desire, the three deep fountains of affection.

Son of Adam, or daughter of Eve, art thou trapped by nature,

And is thy young eye dazzled with the pleasant form of beauty?

This is but a lower love; still it hath its honour;

What God hath made and meant to charm, let not man despise.

Nevertheless, as reason's child, look thou wisely farther,

For age, disease, and care, and sin, shall tarnish all the surface:

Reach a loftier love: be lured by the comeliness of mind,—

Gentle, kind, and calm, or lustrous in the livery of knowledge.

And more, there is a higher grade; force the mind to its perfection—

Win those golden trophies of consummate love:

Add unto riches of the reason, and a beauty moulded to thy liking,

The precious things of nobler grace that well adorn a soul;

Thus, be thou owner of a treasure, great in earth and heaven,

Beauty, wisdom, goodness, in a creature like its God.

So then, draw we to an end; with feeble step and faltering,

I follow beauty through the universe, and find her home Ubiquity:

In all that God hath made, in all that man hath marred,

Lingereth beauty, or its wreck, a broken mould and castings.

And now, having wandered long time, freely and with desultory feet,

To gather in the garden of the world a few fair sample flowers,

With patient scrutinizing care let us cull the conclusion of their essence,

And answer to the riddle of Zorobabel, Whence the might of beauty?

Ugliness is native unto nothing, but an attribute of concrete evil;

In everything created, at its worst, lurk the dregs of loveliness:

We be fallen into utter depths, yet once we stood sublime,

For man was made in perfect praise, his Maker's comely image:

And so his new-born ill is spiced with older good,

He carrieth with him, yea to crime, the withered limbs of beauty.

Passions may be crooked generosities; the robber stealeth for his children;

Murder was avenger of the innocent, or wiped out shame with blood.

Many virtues, weighted by excess, sink among the vices;

Many vices, amicably buoyed, float among the virtues.

For, albeit sin is hate, a foul and bitter turpitude,

As hurling back against the Giver all His gifts with insult,

Still when concrete in the sinner, it will seem to partake of his attractions,

And in seductive masquerade shall cloak its leprous skin;

His broken lights of beauty shall illumine its utter black,

And those refracted rays glitter on the hunch of its deformity.

Verily the fancy may be false, yet hath it met me in my musings,

That even those yearnings after beauty, in wayward wanton youth,

When, guileless of ulterior end, it craveth but to look upon the lovely,

Seem like struggles of the soul, dimly remembering pre-existence,

And feeling in its blindness for a long-lost god, to satisfy its longing;

As if the sucking babe, tenderly mindful of his mother,

Should pull a dragon's dugs, and drain the teats of poison.

Our primal source was beauty, and we pant for it ever and again;

But sin hath stopped the way with thorns; we turn aside, wander, and are lost.

God, the undiluted good, is root and stock of beauty,

And every child of reason drew his essence from that stem.

Therefore, it is of intuition, an innate hankering for home,

A sweet returning to the well, from which our spirit flowed,

That we, unconscious of a cause, should bask these darkened souls

In some poor relics of the light that blazed in primal beauty,

And, even like as exiles of idolatry, should quaff from the cisterns of creation

Stagnant draughts, for those fresh springs that rise in the Creator.

Only, being burdened with the body, spiritual appetite is warped,

And sensual man, with taste corrupted, drinketh of pollutions:

Impulse is left, but indiscriminate; his hunger feasteth upon carrion;

His natural love of beauty doateth over beauty in decay.

He still thirsteth for the beautiful; but his delicate ideal hath grown gross,

And the very sense of thirst hath been fevered from affection into passion.

He remembereth the blessedness of light, but it is with an old man's memory,

A blind old man from infancy, that once hath seen the sun,

Whom long experience of night hath darkened in his cradle recollections,

Until his brightest thought of noon is but a shade of black.

This then is thy charm, O beauty all pervading;

And this thy wondrous strength, O beauty, conqueror of all:

The outline of our shadowy best, the pure and comely creature,

That winneth on the conscience with a saddening admiration:

And some untutored thirst for God, the root of every pleasure,

Native to creatures, yea in ruin, and dating from the birthday of the soul.

For God sealeth up the sum, confirmed exemplar of proportions,

Rich in love, full of wisdom, and perfect in the plenitude of Beauty.

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