The Mind
Beauty
From Last Poems (1918)
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.
Codex Note
A tired speaker composes a mock epitaph, 'Here lies all that no one loved of him / And that loved no one', and then sends his heart 'like a dove' to a tree in a quiet vale where Beauty is.
Cite this poem
MLA
Thomas, Edward. “Beauty.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/thomas_e/38/.
Chicago
Thomas, Edward. “Beauty.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/thomas_e/38/.
Read this poem with the Codex →