WHICH IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LINE?

Otago Witness, Issue 3768, 1 June 1926, Page 74

WHICH IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LINE?

Some time ago it was stated that the line by Keats, “A tiling of beauty is a joy for ever," was the finest single thought composed by any writer or poet. The New York Evening Post Literary Review invited the poets of America to give their views on the matter, and here are some of the lines they select as being the best:— The fraiil duration of a rose. —Freneau. And high above the fight the lonely bugle grieves. —Grenville Mellen. The magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas in taery lands forlorn. —Keats. Ocr little life is rounded with a sleep. —Shakespeare. After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well. —Shakespeare. And joy whose hand la ever at his lips, bidding adieu. —Keats. The light that never was on sea or land. —Wordsworth. What I aspired to be And was not, comforts me. —Browning. ’Tis not what man does, exalts him,. But what mau would do. —Browning. Uetf good is man's life, the mere living—how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever In joy. —Browning. So I have heard and do in nart believe. —Shakespeare. Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy gaol. —John Donne. God’s in His heaven— All’s right with the world. —Browning. On earth the broken arc— In heaven the perfect round. —Browning. Ah, must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limm with it? —Francis Thompson. My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the Sky. —Wordsworth. Measure me, sky ! Tell me I reach by a song Nearer the stars. —Mary Atwater Taylor. Thtm blossomed the stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. —Longfellow. A swarm of fireflies tangled In a silver braid. —Tennyson.. Oh, thou are fairer than the evening air, OHA in the beauty of a thousand stars. —Marlowe. j The dancing dust that makes a star. —Richard le Galliennc. Not till the fire is dying In the grate. Look we for any kinship with the stars. —George Meredith. I hoar lake wator lapping with low sounds ey the shore. —Yeats. And aqueous pools of marvellous spouting whales. —Harold Vinal.

I saw a rain falling and the rainbow' drawn On Lammermuir. —Stevenson. And the sound of the sea without wind is about them, and sunset is red. —Swinburne. Bare ruined choirs where late the qweet birds sang. —Shakespeare. Where the dead leaf fell there did it rest. —Keats. Bloom forever, O Republic, From the dust of my bosom! —Edgar Lee Masters. Then never dream that fire or beauty stays More than one April moment in its flight. —Arthur Ficke. Death is a pillow where I rest my head till morning. —Clara Pratt Meadowcroft. lie made Death wait for him. —May Riley Smith. The glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome —- —Poe. If I should die. think only this of me— That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. —-Rupert Brooke. Motionless as a cloud the old man stood. —Wordsworth. Cycles ferried my cradle. —Whitman. For old, unlrappy, far-off things And battles long ago. —Wordsworth. The salt, unplumbed, estranging sea. —Matthew Arnold.