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About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker searches for a way to preserve beauty against its inevitable disappearance, finding no solution.
In plain terms
Is there any way to keep beauty from disappearing forever?
What can you take from it?
Beauty is temporary and hard to preserve.

Where it applies

  • lamenting loss
  • philosophical inquiry

Putting it to work

  • accepting impermanence
  • capturing moments

Questions to consider

  • Can anything truly be kept?
  • Why does beauty fade?

Another view

It assumes preservation is possible but fails.

More from Gerard Manley Hopkins

  1. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

    Permalink to quote #48
  2. Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver.

    Permalink to quote #50
  3. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

    Permalink to quote #47

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