Beautiful Women

Women sit, or move to and fro--some old, some young;
The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist, often considered one of the most influential poets in the American canon. His work broke the boundaries of poetic form and is known for its free verse style. Whitman’s most famous collection, 'Leaves of Grass', celebrates democracy, nature, love, and friendship. He had a significant impact on later literary traditions and is often referred to as the father of free verse.

Walt Whitman

1861

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

Now Finale To The Shore

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

O Star Of France

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

An Old Mans Thought Of School

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Living Beauty

Ill say and maybe dream I have drawn content
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,
The living beauty is for younger men,
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

William Butler Yeats

Woman

Here's to the ladies, the good, young ladies;
But not too good, for the good die young,
And we want no dead ones.
And here's to the good old ladies,
But not too old, for we want no dyed ones.

Unknown

Old Age

The young see heaven - but to the old who wait
    The final call, the hills of youth arise
    More beautiful than shores of Paradise.
Beside a glowing and voracious grate
    A dozing couple dream of yesterday;
The islands of a vanished past appear,
Bringing forgotten names and faces near;
    While lost in mist, the present fades away.
The fragrant winds of tender memories blow
    Across the gardens of the "Used-to-be!"
    They smile into each other's eyes, and see
The bride and bridegroom of the long ago.
    And tremulous lips, pressed close to faded cheek
    Love's silent tale of deathless passion speak.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

One Woman To All Women

I don't care whether I am beautiful to you
        You other women.
Nothing of me that you see is my own;
A man balances, bone unto bone
Balances, everything thrown
        In the scale, you other women.

You may look and say to yourselves, I do
        Not show like the rest.
My face may not please you, nor my stature; yet if you knew
How happy I am, how my heart in the wind rings true
Like a bell that is chiming, each stroke as a stroke
falls due,
        You other women:

You would draw your mirror towards you, you would wish
        To be different.
There's the beauty you cannot see, myself and him
Balanced in glorious equilibrium,
The swinging beauty of equilibrium,
        You other women.

There's this other beauty, the way...

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

In Those Old Days

In those old days you were called beautiful,
But I have worn the beauty from your face;
The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheek
With the harsh years, and the fire in your eyes
Burns darker now and deeper, feeding on
Beauty and the remembrance of things gone.
Even your voice is altered when you speak,
Or is grown mute with old anxiety
For me.

Even as a fire leaps into flame and burns
Leaping and laughing in its lovely flight,
And then under the flame a glowing dome
Deepens slowly into blood-like light:--
So did you flame and in flame take delight,
So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.
But I still warm me and make there my home,
Still beauty and youth burn there invisibly
For me.

Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull,
...

John Frederick Freeman

Young Beauty

When at each door the ruffian winds
Have laid a dying man to groan,
And filled the air on winter nights
With cries of infants left alone;
And every thing that has a bed
Will sigh for others that have none:

On such a night, when bitter cold,
Young Beauty, full of love thoughts sweet,
Can redden in her looking-glass;
With but one gown on, in bare feet,
She from her own reflected charms
Can feel the joy of summer's heat.

William Henry Davies