Beauty's Metempsychosis

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That beauty such as thine
 Can die indeed,
Were ordinance too wantonly malign:
No wit may reconcile so cold a creed
 With beauty such as thine.

 From wave and star and flower
 Some effluence rare
Was lent thee, a divine but transient dower:
Thou yield'st it back from eyes and lips and hair
 To wave and star and flower.

 Shouldst thou to-morrow die,
 Thou still shalt be
Found in the rose and met in all the sky:
And from the ocean's heart shalt sing to me,
 Shouldst thou to-morrow die.

© William Watson