| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXXIV. Compensation
Beauty’s Metempsychosis | | By William Watson (1858–1935) |
| | | THAT beauty such as thine | |
| Should die indeed, | |
| Were ordinance too wantonly malign! | |
| No wit may reconcile so cold a creed | |
| With beauty such as thine. | 5 |
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| From wave and star and flower | |
| Some effluence rare | |
| Was lent thee, a divine but transient dower: | |
| Thou yield’st it back from eyes and lips and hair | |
| To wave and star and flower. | 10 |
| |
| Shouldst thou to-morrow die, | |
| Thou still shalt be | |
| Found in the rose and met in all the sky: | |
| And from the ocean’s heart shalt sing to me, | |
| Shouldst thou to-morrow die. | 15 | | | |
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