Beauty

Edward Thomas 1878 (London Borough of Lambeth) – 1917 (Pas-de-Calais)



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 when 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, hapily
Floats through a 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 unanswering to its home and love.
There I find my rest, and through the dusk air
Flies what yet lives in me. Beauty is there

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

47 sec read
194

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABBCCDDEEEFGGHHII
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 780
Words 159
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 18

Edward Thomas

Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh poet and essayist. more…

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    "Beauty" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/9832/beauty>.

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    Which of the following is not one of the "three unities"?
    A Unity of action
    B Unity of time
    C Unity of character
    D Unity of place