This article seeks to explore two basic issues: first, in a larger scope, the literary approximation, from the semantics of the beautiful, to some literary passages and, secondly, to question what the valuation of a literary piece means from the aesthetic point of view. The first allows for the introduction of the more generic notion encompassing the second. Two topics encircling the beautiful are emphasized: terror and the erotic, a relation whose development is intended from three different texts: the contemporary poetry of Pablo Neruda and two ancient texts taken from the sacred literature of the Jewish and Christian bibles. The revision of these texts permits us to see the following subjects which are dealt with separately: firstly, the beauty that redeems the abject; secondly, beauty contemplated atypically from the sordid and, thirdly, the ineffable beauty or the image of terror as the only expression of the devastating force of Eros.