Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

The line juxtaposes two kinds of “beauty” that can function as escapism: the conventionally sublime ("Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying") and the deliberately jarring or comic ("the gorgeous buttocks of the ape"). By pairing them, Hughes suggests that aesthetic pleasure is not inherently ennobling; it can be a private refuge that distracts from harsher realities. The phrasing implies a critique of those who retreat into looking—into art, nature, or spectacle—instead of confronting social conditions. At the same time, the sentence acknowledges beauty’s genuine power to produce happiness, even when the object is unexpected or “low,” broadening what counts as the aesthetic and exposing the subjectivity of taste.