AG: (However,) I wanted to read a couple (of poems)) I want to stay with the breath for a moment. Back to the breath.
Thomas Greaves - 1604. You can find this in an Elizabethan Songbook edited by Noah Greenburg, Doubleday, 1955:
“What is beauty but a breath? Fancy's ...”
Is somebody making noise here? - Okay -
“What is beauty ...” - I'll start again.
“What is beauty but a breath?/Fancies twin at birth & death./ The color of a damask rose/ That fadeth when the north wind blowes/ ‘tis such that though all sorts do crave it,/ they know not what it is to have it. -/ a thing that sometimes stoops not to a king/ and yet most open to the commonest thing -/ For she that is most fair/ Is open to the aire.”
That's pretty good.
Student: That's perfect.
AG: It's amazing, in fact, how much comes in and out of some very subtle thought of mind - of open mind related to spirit, to breath and everything. I'll read it one more time. I saw it in a book and I copied it down. It's by Thomas Greaves in 1604.
“What is beauty but a breath?/ Fancies twin ...” – (that is, Imagination's twin, thought form's twin – thought-form's twin) “at birth & death.” – “ What is beauty but a breath?/Fancies twin at birth & death./ The color of a damask rose/ That fadeth when the north wind blowes/ ‘tis such that though all sorts do crave it,/ they know not what it is to have it. -/ a thing that sometimes stoops not to a king/ and yet most open to the commonest thing -/ For she that is most fair/ Is open to the aire.”
Student: I love that.
Student: That's brilliant.
AG: Well, I don't know. “What is beauty but a breath?” It's a song. There's music to it, actually, in the(An) Elizabethan Songbookby Noah Greenberg, edited by (W.H.Auden, Chester Kallman and) Noah Greenberg, Doubleday, '55, Anchor.
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty-four-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-six-and-a-half minutes in]
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty-four-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-six-and-a-half minutes in]