Fugitive Verses
Popular Reprinted Poetry from Nineteenth Century Newspapers

Beautiful Things

Source of witness transcribed: Los Angeles Daily Herald (Los Angeles, California)

Date of witness transcribed: 16 October 1875

Notes about this poem: "Beautiful Things" was printed in at least 205 newspapers during the nineteenth century. It can be found using ID 8921 in this table of most widely-reprinted poems.

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  • Beautiful faces are those that wear,
  • It matters little if dark or fair—
  • Whole-souled honestly printed there.

  • Beautiful eyes are those that show,
  • Like crystal panes where hearth fires glow,
  • Beautiful thoughts that burn below.

  • Beautiful lips are those whose words
  • Leap from the heart like songs of birds,
  • Yet whose utterance prudence girds.

  • Beautiful hands are those that do
  • Work that is earnest and brave and true,
  • Moment by moment the long day through.

  • Beautiful feet are those that go
  • On kindly ministries to and fro—
  • Down lowest ways, if God wills it so.

  • Beautiful shoulders are those that bear
  • Ceaseless burdens of homely care
  • With patient grace and daily prayer.

  • Beautiful lives are those that bless—
  • Silent rivers of happiness.
  • Whose hidden fountains few may guess

  • Beautiful twilight, at set of sun
  • Beautiful goal, with race well won,
  • Beautiful rest, with work well done.

  • Beautiful graves, where grasses creep,
  • Where brown leaves fall, where drifts lie deep
  • Over worn-out hands—Oh, beautiful sleep!