Beauty Bowl

Where sows thy seeds, oh beauty bowl?

And Where, thy fairest lilly knoll?

And canst thou still a beating clock?

With thy will, span history's epoch?

Or is it true, thy heart is held

Not in time or mountain's fields

But beneath the timid flitting lids

Of lovestruck Venus-favored maids

And shinning out from in their smiles

Spread your crafty passion-wiles?

If no, then where may you be found

If not in women's faces bound

Perhaps, though, we may test your worth

In the innocence of birth

In sanguine hope, and newness, dear

There shall we find your presence, near?

No not in any sensuous form

Perhaps, then in a mem'ry, torn

In pain or at the end of youth

You rest your seeds upon this truth

For hope, of pain and sadness, bought

Is sure, more precious than the lot

Of riches, loves, and blessed dole

For it can see the spectrum, whole

It may well be we love the best

When after, we are laid to rest

And only after hunter's pain

Shakes the lion, proud, his mane

But then spoke back the beauty bowl

And bore its enigmatic soul

“No, not in love, or hurt, or shame

But in the whisper of a name

Beauty is not in the eyes

Of maidens crossed by Venus' guise

But rather in the vision of

The spectators, the former, love

It cannot span the breadth of time

Nor favor death; misfortune's crime

It cannot face eternity

It cannot mount uncertainty

And it is not endless-sent

Nor is its lure all innocent

Beauty may not speak through books

But lies in view of he who looks