If Beauty came to you,
Ah, would you know her grace,
And could you in your shadowed prison view
Unscathed her face?
Stepping as noiselessly
As moving moth-wings, so
Might she come suddenly to you or me
And we not know.
Amid these clangs and cries,
Alas, how should we hear
The shy, dim-woven music of her sighs
As she draws near.
Threading through monstrous, black,
Uncharitable hours,
Where the soul shapes its own abhorrèd rack
Of wasted powers?
From: Seymour, William Kean, “If Beauty Came to You” in Seymour, William Kean (ed.), Miscellany of Poetry 1919, 2011, Project Gutenberg: Salt Lake City, Utah, p. [unnumbered].
(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9652/9652-h/9652-h.htm)
Date: 1919
By: William Kean Seymour (1887-1975)