# Beauty — Poetry character guide

> Beauty in Poetry by George MacDonald.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** the fair Beauty

**First appearance:** 0022-i-know-what-beauty-is

## Snapshot

The fair ideal addressed in verse — a flower with an open cup, a panting dove, a morning that breaks and fades while the soul watches.

## Who they are

Beauty moves through these poems as both invitation and rebuke: a heart like a flower waiting to be filled with 'a crystal of tender sympathy,' yet also a fire that climbs till its work is done and a stalk that falls when the flower is gone. The speaker urges her to triumph in her present youth, to leap at once into the truth, rather than wither in doubt and dull opinion. She matters because she is the poem's figure for the soul's own brief, bright chance — the beauty that must be lived, not merely admired, before the stars melt silently away.

## In the story

### [Life of Death?](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/life-of-death)

Addressed directly as the potential beneficiary of a dreadful source of growth.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/characters/beauty
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/characters