
“Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.”
No. 2, The Anagram, line 27
Elegies
Source: The Complete English Poems
“Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.”
No. 2, The Anagram, line 27
Elegies
Source: The Complete English Poems
“A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.”
Speaking of the Massacre at Wounded Knee.
Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.
And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
Peter Quince at the Clavier (1915)
Context: Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.
449: I died for Beauty —
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Context: I died for Beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb,
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room — He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty," I replied.
"And I — for Truth, — Themself are One —
We Brethren, are", He said —
“She was beautiful when she died—a hundred years ago.”
Prof. Von Helsing (Edward Van Sloan)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
“That Muretto di Alassio by Mario Berrino is a beautiful color film.”
Domenica del Corriere, 1973
“When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.”
Source: The Song of Achilles
“Beauty has wings, and too hastily flies,
And love, unrewarded, soon sickens and dies.”
"Song XII" (c. 1750s), St. 3; (Poetical Works of Edward Moore, London: Cawthorn, 1797).