Sweet Rose..

Virtue

By: George Herbert

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, to bright!

The bridal of the earth and sky --

The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;

For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie,

My music shows ye have your closes,

And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like season'd timber, never gives;

But thought the whole world turns to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

All earthly things, no matter how lovely or beautiful, will fade. They are beautiful only because the are of He who is Beauty itself. In a way they are accidents of God who is the substance. For example, lovely flowers may be destroyed but beauty still exists. Even if every little pretty thing was destroyed beauty would still be. Men can come to possess beauty as their own by developing virtuous souls; and since men have immortal souls, which will live on after the body dies, that beauty will exist in souls without being destroyed and cannot be damaged by material things. When the world "turns to coal", the soul not only survives  but "chiefly lives". The soul and its beauty live even more so being detached from all earthly chains. Detached from the worlds ugliness and seeing Beauty face to Face, the virtuous soul is most joyful, complete and living as it ought. :]