These patterns of the early morning light
Flickering through imperfect glass and lead
Are beautiful.  Yet not to this mite’s sight.
A beauteous thing, alive just now, lies dead.

That ship that slid behind a fringe of palm
Has stained the silver sea with dull grey wake.
All things, then, both alive and dead, do harm;
If evils pass— how long they seem to take!

All evils pass— yet with them, beauty dies.
True beauty is not bound to good alone;
Beauty there is in many a monster’s eyes,
And beauty, too, when mountains vomit stone.

Go fetch my spade to wound a perilous land,
This still warm rainbow, limp within my hand.