"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST"
AN IMPRESSION
(Alhambra, January 20, 1898)
A feast of colour gay and bright,
A scene of unalloyed delight,
A glad escape from drabs and greys,
From racking thought and toilsome days;
A vision of a fairy land
Where youth and beauty hand in hand
Dance through radiant summer hours
O'er verdant lawns bestrewn with flowers:
Earth made a Paradise anew,
The Golden Age again in view;
All thought of life's sad discords drowned
In wave on wave of pulsing sound;
Beauty, enchantment, poetry,
Motion harmonious, rhythmic, free;
Forms graceful, sinuous, and lithe,
With gladsome animation blithe;
Houris for whose bewitching eyes
Angels would forfeit Paradise;
All that the senses can delight,
All that can wing time's heavy flight;
A show of loveliness supreme,
A realised poetic dream;
All here exhilarates and gladdens,
And not a thought intrudes that saddens;
A wild delirium of joy
Without control, without alloy,
Intoxicating and entrancing
Till heart and brain and nerves are dancing!
*****
Ah! with a sudden shock of pain,
I'm thrown back on myself again—
Descending on the final rally,
The curtain falls upon—the Ballet!
And leaves me once again to feel
The disillusion of the real;
To pass into the gloomy night
With no deceptive splendours bright;
To meditate how transitory
Are all man's pleasures, all his glory;
How fast his happy moments fleet,
While misery moves with leaden feet.
*****
What I moralise in style so trite
That Mawworms might your verses cite!
Away with thoughts which, false or true,
Are profitless and far from new;
'Tis much to gain an hour's delight,
And wing with joy time's weary flight:
To analyse our joys away
Is but mere folly to display;
If all our joys are but illusions
Our sorrows also are delusions:
If nature cheats us into grief
Should we not thank her for relief?
If life is a dissolving view
Then death no more than life is true:
Real are our visions while they last,
Unreal as they seem when past:
With every pleasant hour that's spent
We cheat the fates malevolent,
Who may indeed with martyrdom
Afflict us in the time to come,
But cannot those blest hours recall,
When pleasure did our souls enthral.
A scene of unalloyed delight,
A glad escape from drabs and greys,
From racking thought and toilsome days;
A vision of a fairy land
Where youth and beauty hand in hand
Dance through radiant summer hours
O'er verdant lawns bestrewn with flowers:
Earth made a Paradise anew,
The Golden Age again in view;
All thought of life's sad discords drowned
In wave on wave of pulsing sound;
Beauty, enchantment, poetry,
Motion harmonious, rhythmic, free;
Forms graceful, sinuous, and lithe,
With gladsome animation blithe;
Houris for whose bewitching eyes
Angels would forfeit Paradise;
All that the senses can delight,
All that can wing time's heavy flight;
A show of loveliness supreme,
A realised poetic dream;
All here exhilarates and gladdens,
And not a thought intrudes that saddens;
A wild delirium of joy
Without control, without alloy,
Intoxicating and entrancing
Till heart and brain and nerves are dancing!
*****
Ah! with a sudden shock of pain,
I'm thrown back on myself again—
Descending on the final rally,
The curtain falls upon—the Ballet!
And leaves me once again to feel
The disillusion of the real;
To pass into the gloomy night
With no deceptive splendours bright;
To meditate how transitory
Are all man's pleasures, all his glory;
How fast his happy moments fleet,
While misery moves with leaden feet.
*****
What I moralise in style so trite
That Mawworms might your verses cite!
Away with thoughts which, false or true,
Are profitless and far from new;
'Tis much to gain an hour's delight,
And wing with joy time's weary flight:
To analyse our joys away
Is but mere folly to display;
If all our joys are but illusions
Our sorrows also are delusions:
If nature cheats us into grief
Should we not thank her for relief?
If life is a dissolving view
Then death no more than life is true:
Real are our visions while they last,
Unreal as they seem when past:
With every pleasant hour that's spent
We cheat the fates malevolent,
Who may indeed with martyrdom
Afflict us in the time to come,
But cannot those blest hours recall,
When pleasure did our souls enthral.