Beauty
Say not of Beauty she is good,Or aught but beautiful,Or sleek to doves' wings of the woodHer wild wings of a gull.
Call her not wicked; that word's touchConsumes her like a curse;But love her not too much, too much,For that is even worse.
O, she is neither good nor bad,But innocent and wild!Enshrine her and she dies, who hadThe hard heart of a child.
Words in this poem
- aught n.
- Property; possession. [AS. , fr. agan to own, p. p. ahte.]
- enshrine v. t.
- To inclose in a shrine or chest; hence, to preserve or cherish as something sacred; as, to enshrine something in memory.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Beauty is in the public domain. This text is taken from Nets to Catch the Wind, Project Gutenberg ebook #6682; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Elinor Wylie, Beauty, in Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6682, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/wylie-nets/beauty.html, id L12753.
Form and metre
Beauty is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABAB goodA · beautifulB · woodA · gullB
- 2 ABAB touchA · curseB · muchA · worseB
- 3 ABAB badA · wildB · hadA · childB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Say not of Beauty she is good, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Or aught but beautiful, | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Or sleek to doves' wings of the wood | 8 | ········ |
| Her wild wings of a gull. | 6 | ······ |
| Call her not wicked; that word's touch | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Consumes her like a curse; | 6 | ˘/···· |
| But love her not too much, too much, | 8 | ········ |
| For that is even worse. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| O, she is neither good nor bad, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| But innocent and wild! | 6 | ·/˘˘·· |
| Enshrine her and she dies, who had | 8 | ˘/······ |
| The hard heart of a child. | 6 | ······ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.