What's the brightness of a brow?
What's a mouth of pearls and corals?
Beauty vanishes like a vapor,
Preach the men of musty morals!
Should the crowd then, ages since,
Have shut their ears to singing Homer,
Because the music fled as soon
As fleets the violet's aroma?
Ah, for me, I thrill to see
The bloom a velvet cheek discloses,
Made of dust—I well believe it!
So are lilies, so are roses!