This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don't wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now.
Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent, not even a flicker of thought - and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees.
I would that you were either less beautiful, or less corrupt. Such perfect beauty does not suit such imperfect morals.
[Lat., Aut formosa fores minus, aut minus improba vellem.
Non facit ad mores tam bona forma malos.]
To Helen Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.