Sarah Goodridge, "Beauty Revealed" (1828)

"WHY should beauty endure,

Once in its perfect act

Manifest and secure?

"Although to-day retract

The breath that yesterday

Informed the body's fact,

"Still from the angry clay

Some ripe significance

Is reaped and laid away,

"Out of the husk of chance

Drawn clear, and purified

Of earthy circumstance."

So they said. I tried

To believe what they said,

Because my friend had died...

But the dead are dead.

E. R. Dodds (1893-1979). Coterie, A Quarterly. Art. Prose and Poetry. No. 3, December, 1919. London: Hendersons.