While Loveliness Goes By

Sometimes when all the world seems gray and dun

And nothing beautiful, a voice will cry,

“Look out, look out! Angels are drawing nigh!”

Then my slow burdens leave me, one by one,

And swiftly does my heart arise and run

Even like a child, while loveliness goes by—

And common folk seem children of the sky,

And common things seem shapèd of the sun.

Oh, pitiful! that I who love them, must

So soon perceive their shining garments fade!

And slowly, slowly, from my eyes of trust

Their flaming banners sink into a shade!

While this earth’s sunshine seems the golden dust

Slow settling from that radiant cavalcade.

Credit

This poem is in the public domain.

About this Poem

“While Loveliness Goes By” first appeared in The Smith College Monthly (October, 1903) and was later published in Branch’s collection The Shoes That Danced and Other Poems (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1905).

Author

Anna Hempstead Branch

Anna Hempstead Branch was born in New London, Connecticut, in 1875. She is the author of The Heart of the Road and Other Poems (Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1901) and The Shoes That Danced (Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1905). She died in New York in 1937.

Date Published

10/07/2017