Classic Literature
The Poems of Edward ThomasBeauty

Beauty

What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,
No man, woman, or child alive could please
Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh
Because I sit and frame an epitaph⁠—
“Here lies all that no one loved of him
And that loved no one.” Then in a trice that whim
Has wearied. But, though I am like a river
At fall of evening while it seems that never
Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while
Cross breezes cut the surface to a file,
This heart, some fraction of me, happily
Floats through the window even now to a tree
Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale,
Not like a pewit that returns to wail
For something it has lost, but like a dove
That slants unswerving to its home and love.
There I find my rest, and through the dusk air
Flies what yet lives in me. Beauty is there.

Contents
Home1 minAspens1 minAn Old Song1 minThere Was a Time1 minAmbition1 minNo One Cares Less Than I1 minRoads1 minThis Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong1 minThe Chalk-Pit2 minHealth2 minBeauty1 minSnow1 minThe New Year1 minThe Brook1 minThe Other3 minHouse and Man1 minThe Gypsy1 minMan and Dog2 minA Private1 minOut in the Dark1 minThe Lane1 minFull contents of The Poems of Edward Thomas
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