ON A LONELY SPRAY Under a lonely sky a lonely tree Is beautiful. All that is loneliness Is beautiful. A feather lost at sea; A staring owl; a moth; a yellow tress Of seaweed on a rock, is beautiful. The night-lit moon, wide-wandering in sky; A blue-bright spark, where ne'er a cloud is up; A wing, where no wing is, it is so high; A bee in winter, or a buttercup, Late-blown, are lonely, and are beautiful. She, whom you saw but once, and saw no more; That he, who startled you, and went away; The eye that watched you from a cottage door; The first leaf, and the last; the break of day; The mouse, the cuckoo, and the cloud, are beautiful. For all that is, is lonely; all that may Will be as lonely as is that you see; The lonely heart sings on a lonely spray, The lonely soul swings lonely in the sea, And all that loneliness is beautiful. All, all alone, and all without a part Is beautiful, for beauty is all where; Where is an eye is beauty, where an heart Is beauty, brooding out, on empty air, All that is lonely and is beautiful. -- James Stephens (born 1882)