Beauty

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.