THE DEFINITION OF BEAUTY — Summary

Herrick offers a single, striking image for beauty: a beam of light suddenly blazing out between two opposite points. He calls those points “the middle and extreme,” so he’s suggesting beauty lives in a tense, perfect spot — not too plain, not too wild, but exactly where a sudden brightness can leap into view. It’s not a static quality, but something that happens, a brief radiance caught between safety and excess. The speaker’s tone is crisp and certain, like someone placing a gem in your hand and closing your fingers around it. There’s no drawn‑out description or gushing emotion; instead, the poem’s brevity itself feels like the flash it describes. The mood is quietly exhilarated — a moment of clarity about something fleeting and luminous, as if beauty can’t be pinned down, only glimpsed right when opposites meet.