Another sonnet by John Masefield, and again he pursues his thoughts on beauty, beauty a an entity. Even in this intellectual composition, little scenes creep in… he cannot avoid a story even when he is being philosophical. ‘Some drowsy drug is groped for on the shelves’ – whoever has had a headache, or other pain has groped around in the medicine cabinet or along the bathroom shelves. ‘We move and speak and wonder and have been, upon the dust as dust, not queens and kings’… and all of us, have realised that we are just ordinary folk, not royal or special.
If Beauty be at all, if, beyond sense,
There be a wisdom piercing into brains,
Why should the glory wait on impotence,
Biding its time till blood is in the veins?
There is no beauty, but when thought is quick,
Out of the noisy sickroom of ourselves,
Some flattery comes to try to cheat the sick,
Some drowsy drug is groped for on the shelves,
And, for the rest, we play upon a scene
Beautiful with the blood of living things;
We move and speak and wonder and have been,
Upon the dust as dust, not queens and kings;
We know no beauty, nor does beauty care
For us, this dust, that men make everywhere.
Lois Elsden 