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“ A thing of beauty is a joy forever!
There stood the deathless line in old-fashioned, unpretentious type, making its virgin appearance in the world, innocent of fame, ready to go forth on its mission of delight to all lovers of beauty! Few eyes had seen it then, which now is known to myriads: the poem of love and of lovers, thought I to myself, vague, wayward, faulty, exquisite, strange, a mirror wherein the enamored may behold their ideal rather than its reality, or if the reality, then as haloed and softened by the ideal. Beauty dawns through it like summer moonbeams through pearly mists ”

“ The voice of youth, innocent, sensuous, and musical, echoes about it; soul and flesh are interwoven in its mesh, each glorifying the other. A book, indeed, fit for the reading of the lover and his beloved, sitting cheek to cheek, breathing its aroma, tasting its sweetness, even as Paolo and Francesca in the dim Florentine chamber! Lifting their eyes intermittently from the page to one another, they know how true it is that a thing of beauty is a joy forever—a truth hidden from others revealed to them! ”

“ For her influence—the perception that it aroused in me—had always been that of a young woman in the bloom of her career—such a woman, with bright auburn hair and sparkling dark eyes, as my fancy had conjured up standing in the presence of royalty. The century that intervened, while denying all hope of confirming this vision in the flesh, yet assured me that her freshness and beauty were beyond the reach of time; that she was an immortal reality, secure and unchangeable. ”