Almost the body leads the laggard soul; bidding it see

The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity

Of fusion with the earth. The body turns to dust

Not only by a sudden whelming thrust,

Or at the end of a corrupting calm,

But oftentimes anticipates and, entering flowers and trees

Upon a hillside or along the brink

Of streams, encounters instances

Of its eventual enterprise:

Inhabits the enclosing clay,

In rhapsody is caught away

On a great tide

Of beauty, to abide

Translated through the night and day

Of time and, by the anointing balm

Of earth, to outgrow decay.

Hark in the wind—the word of silent lips!

Look where some subtle throat, that once had wakened lust,

Lies clear and lovely now, a silver link

Of change and peace!

Hollows and willows and a river-bed,

Anemones and clouds,

Raindrops and tender distances

Above, beneath,

Inherit and bequeath

Our far-begotten beauty. We are wed

With many kindred who were seeming dead.

Only the delicate woven shrouds

Are vanished, beauty thrown aside

To honor and uncover

A deeper beauty—as the veil that slips

Breathless away between a lover

And his bride.

So, by the body, may the soul surmise

The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity

Of fusion: when, set free

From semblance of mortality,

Yielding its dust the richer to endueA common avenue

Of earth for other souls to journey through,

It shall put on in purer guise

The mutual beauty of its destiny.

And who shall fear for his identity

And who shall cling to the poor privacy

Of incompleteness, when the end explains

That what pride forfeits, beauty gains!

Therefore, O spirit, as a runner strips

Upon a windy afternoon,

Be unencumbered of what troubles you—

Arise with grace

And greatly go!—the wind upon your face!

Grieve not for the invisible transported brow

On which like leaves the dark hair grew,

Nor for the lips of laughter that are now

Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew,

Nor for the limbs that, fallen low

And seeming faint and slow,

Shall alter and renew

Their shape and hue

Like birches white before the moon

Or a young apple-tree

In spring or the round seaAnd shall pursue

More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips

Among ... and find more winds than ever blew

The straining sails of unimpeded ships!

A sudden music, Celia, through a poplar-bough,

Where leaves are small and new,

Comes laughing and goes hastening like you.

Beauty is more than hands or face or eyes

Or the long curve that lies

Upon a bed waiting, more than the rise

Of sun among the birds, more than the oar that plies

Under the moon for lovers, more than a tune that buys

Pennies from time. Vision and touch comprise

Yesterday’s promise, today’s token

Of a fulfillment that shall have no need to be perceived or spoken,

Wherein all love is the award

Poured upon beauty and no heart is broken

And no grief is stored.

For never beauty diesThat lived. Nightly the skies

Assemble stars, the light of hopeful eyes,

And daily brood on the communal breath—

Which we call death.

Nothing is lost. Nothing I have of loveliness

Exceeds a minute part

Of my own loveliness when it shall be fulfilled

With Celia’s and all loveliness that lies

In every heart.

All that I have is but the start

And the beginning, the bewildering guess

Of what shall be distilled

Out of my soul by you and you,

Each soul of all souls, till one soul remains

Which every beauty shall imbue

Clean of the differences and pains....

I shall be Celia’s everlastingness.