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. [Illustration] 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. [Illustration] 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.