#poetry Did you spring out of heaven or the abyss, Beauty? Your gaze infernal, yet divine, Spreads infamy and glory, grief and bliss, And therefore you can be compared to wine. Drunken, we see you as you truly are: A phantasmagoria, a grieving face, An insubstantial image that does not mar The brightness of the stars in their serene place. But when we sober up, we adore your form, Eternal as promised in sacred books, And if we die before our time is due, We die content, for having seen your face. Man, adrift on the sea of doubt and pain, Clings to your beauty as to a raft; Your beauty is his only certain gain. And yet, O Beauty, we can only laugh, For all too soon we see you fade and die, Like morning mist or like a fading star. Bound to a mortal body, subject to Time, You cannot help but suffer and decay; Yet, in your sufferance and in your decline, You are still beautiful, and so we pray: O Beauty, may your pain be our relief, And may your death be our eternal life.