Let a Florid Music Praise
Let a Florid Music Praise - meaning Summary
Beauty's Uneasy Triumph
The poem contrasts public celebration of physical beauty with a quieter, persistent power held by the unloved and wounded. While trumpets praise beauty’s visible triumphs, the poem warns that hidden sorrow and secret offspring of pain persist and eventually assert themselves. Death is framed as an unavoidable force that dissolves vows and returns all vigilance to nothing. The tone is elegiac and quietly accusatory.
Read Complete AnalysesLet a florid music praise, The flute and the trumpet, Beauty's conquest of your face: In that land of flesh and bone, Where from citadels on high Her imperial standards fly, Let the hot sun Shine on, shine on. O but the unloved have had power, The weeping and striking, Always: time will bring their hour; Their secretive children walk Through your vigilance of breath To unpardonable Death, And my vows break Before his look.
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