Beauty's essence

Beauty asked God one day This question: ‘Why Didst Thou not make me, in Thy world, undying?’

And God replying— ‘A picture-show is this world: all this world A tale out of the long night of not-being; And in it, seeing

Its nature works through mutability, That only is lovely whose essence knows decay

The moon stood near and heard this colloquy, The words took wing about the sky And reached the morning-star;

Dawn learned them from its star, and told the dew— It told the heavens’ whisper to Earth’s poor familiar;

And at the dew’s report the flower’s eye filled, With pain the new bud’s tiny heartbeat thrilled

Springtime fled from the garden, weeping; Youth, that had come to wander there, went creeping Sadly away.