The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty

A poem by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 1517 – 1547. Howard was beheaded for political ambition by Henry VIII who died a week later.

The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty

Brittle beauty that nature made so frail,

Whereof the gift is small, and short the season,

Flow’ring to-day, to-morrow apt to fail,

Tickle treasure, abhorred of reason,

Dangerous to deal with, vain, of none avail,

Costly in keeping, passed no worth two peason,

Slipper in sliding, as in an eele’s tail,

Hard to attain, once gotten not geason,

Jewel in jeopardy, that peril doth assail,

False and untrue, enticed oft to treason,

En’my to youth (that most may I bewail!),

Ah, bitter sweet! infecting as the poison,

The fairest as fruit that with the frost is taken:

To-day ready ripe, to-morrow all to-shaken.[i]

Glossary:

tickle – easily unsettled, delicate

peason – that which reconciles, from pease – peace

geason – rare

Commentary:

Howard’s basic theme is that beauty is brittle and frail, a small gift that only lasts a season. It flowers today and fails tomorrow. Beauty is treacherous, bitter sweet, false and untrue and often leads us astray.

What captured my attention first was the rhythm set up by the split line, mostly marked by the commas in the middle of the lines; second Howard’s rhyme scheme, particularly, season, reason, peason, geason, treason, poison.  The third thing to draw my attention is the theme, the transitory nature of beauty. 

Listening to Screwtape’s comments on the demonic warping of the type of “beauty” that appeals to humankind, acts as an interesting foil to Howard’s poem.  What after all is beauty? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and is subject to the vagaries of taste, taste itself being to some extent determined by “cultural” norms set by a few influential people in the arts, advertising, and theatre arts.[ii] 

What Rubens considered beautiful we consider obese, and therefore ugly.  From another perspective, beauty and ugliness radiate from within.  There is such a thing as beauty, even as there is such a thing as ugliness.  Those who have inner beauty, or ugliness, by the virtue of their inner qualities, reflect those qualities in their outward appearance.  Physical beauty is transitory and illusive.

On another level what Howard says about beauty is also true of physical life itself.  This transitory life is as the opening and shutting of a door, and the physical life, outwardly beautiful, or ugly, is transitory.  We will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye and our personal hold on this material realm is “slipper in sliding, as is an eele’s tail.  It is not given to us to permanently possess this material realm.

It is love that makes things, and people, lovely.  It is Love Himself, who is truth and beauty, not a transitory beauty, but an enduring beauty that is the effulgence of the Father’s glory.

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[i]   Henry Howard. in Tudor Poetry and Prose, ed. J. William Hebel,  (New York: Appleton – Century – Crofts, 1953), p. 27-28

[ii] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), Ch. 20