The speaker is calling out to someone they love, asking them to bring everything back—beauty, laughter, even fear and grief. There is a deep sense of loss: once there were warm conversations, happy eyes, and meaningful quiet under the night sky, but now only silence and loneliness remain. Even the thrush’s dawn song and the rising sun feel muted because the past is finished. The speaker does not want to pretend otherwise. Instead, they ask the beloved to lay all of it down, including pain, and leave it in the dark of memory and passing years. There, fears can wither and grief can lose its power. The final line is an urgent, tender plea for love’s brightness to return. The mood is mournful but quietly hopeful, reaching toward renewal.
Bring your Beauty — Summary
Bring your beauty, bring your laughter, bring even your fears, Bring the grief that is, the joy that was in other years, Bring again the happiness, bring love, bring tears.
There was laughter once, there were grave, happy eyes, Talk of firm earth, old earth-sweeping mysteries: There were great silences under clear dark skies.
Now is silence, now is loneliness complete; all is done. The thrush sings at dawn, too sweet, up creeps the sun: But all is silent, silent, for all that was is done.
Yet bring beauty and bring laughter, and bring even tears, And cast them down; strew your happiness and fears, Then leave them to the darkness of thought and years.
Fears in that darkness die; they have no spring. Grief in that darkness is a bird that wants wing.... O love, love, your brightness, your beauty bring.