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"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST"
AN IMPRESSION
(Alhambra, January 20, 1898)
A feast of colour gay and bright,
A scene of unalloyed delight,
A glad escape from drabs and greys,
From racking thought and toilsome days;
A vision of a fairy land
Where youth and beauty hand in hand
Dance through radiant summer hours
O'er verdant lawns bestrewn with flowers:
Earth made a Paradise anew,
The Golden Age again in view;
All thought of life's sad discords drowned
In wave on wave of pulsing sound;
Beauty, enchantment, poetry,
Motion harmonious, rhythmic, free;
Forms graceful, sinuous, and lithe,
With gladsome animation blithe;
Houris for whose bewitching eyes
Angels would forfeit Paradise;
All that the senses can delight,
All that can wing time's heavy flight;
A show of loveliness supreme,
A realised poetic dream;
A scene of unalloyed delight,
A glad escape from drabs and greys,
From racking thought and toilsome days;
A vision of a fairy land
Where youth and beauty hand in hand
Dance through radiant summer hours
O'er verdant lawns bestrewn with flowers:
Earth made a Paradise anew,
The Golden Age again in view;
All thought of life's sad discords drowned
In wave on wave of pulsing sound;
Beauty, enchantment, poetry,
Motion harmonious, rhythmic, free;
Forms graceful, sinuous, and lithe,
With gladsome animation blithe;
Houris for whose bewitching eyes
Angels would forfeit Paradise;
All that the senses can delight,
All that can wing time's heavy flight;
A show of loveliness supreme,
A realised poetic dream;
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