On March We On March Comments

THUS BEAUTY MORE OF BEAUTY GROWS... (BEAUTY) SPREADS HER REIGN EVERYWHERE. I know when the News of the Universe is good news, and this poem announces the very highest sort of good news. In facts, poets have been alternately predicting it or despairing of it for countless generations. And without too much fanfare on earth or from heaven it seems that BEAUTY is now what Thomas Hardy oddly called the President of the Immortals at the end of TESS. Is this a declaration of the end of human suffering? Will Beauty prevail against ugliness? Will Power give way to the tender mercies of the Beautiful?