Explore "Of Inaccessible Beauty" by Thomas Burke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ladies in elegant silks and laces / Have come at times to my insignificant shop, / For pieces of jade, or banners, or curious cuttings of ivory. / And I look with insufferable emotion / Upon their roseleaf skin, / And breathe the soft scents that flow from their garments, / And long to soothe their lily-fingered hands. / In their presence / I am seized with longings unutterable, / And am filled with a sickness of my present unkind estate.
But then I remember / That Beauty's not always a star, / Not always remote, not always in lofty places, / Chrysanthemum-clad and lily-sheathed; / But often lies in the hedges / And peeps from street-corners / And lurks shyly behind broken doorways.
And I think upon the kind and considerate beauty / Of the maid with the golden curls, / And her patched, uncoloured robes of common cloth. / And with a change of mood I charge the elegant ladies / Three times the value of the articles chosen, / And thus tear from their flowery bodies / Pieces of their billowing silk / To deck the less fervid beauty of my friend.