In Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just, I came across a Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, of what happens when a poem (or book), once considered beautiful, ceases to be so:
Is this made plain? What have I come acrossThat here will serve me for comparison?The sceptic disappointment and the lossA boy feels when the poet he pores uponGrows less and less sweet to him, and knows no cause.
What are the books or poems you once loved (in adulthood) and now cannot remember what you found beautiful at the time? Is this memory accompanied by a sense of loss and disappointment?
Time's Flow Stemmed 
>Hmm. When I was in high school and college I loved Thoreau's Walden. If asked what my favorite book was I would inevitably name it. Now, a good many years later, the bloom is off the rose so to speak.
>I'm with you on Walden, Stefanie, my infatuation only lasted until a second reading.