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.