Beautiful Things

by Ellen P[almer]. Allerton

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!