“A thing of beauty is
a joy forever:
Its loveliness
increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness;
but still will keep
A bower quiet for us,
and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams,
and health, and quiet breathing.”
Beauty is eternal and instinctive. It is respite and repose that fosters life, a primordial essence that purges sadness and expresses as tactile,
kinetic, organic, visual and auditory – even gustatory (tasted). Beauty is an
invitation to delight in the sheer existence of things outside self.
“Nor do we feel these
essences
For one short hour: no
even as the trees
That whisper round a
temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s
self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy,
glories infinite,
Haunt us till they
become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound
to us so fast,
That, whether these be
shine, or gloom o’ercast,
They always must be
with us, or we die.”
The poetry of beauty calls us to leave behind material and
spatial limits, self-centered constraints, and seek divine fellowship beyond
the vapor of mortal life.
“Wherein lies
happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to
fellowship divine,
A fellowship with
essence; till we shine,
Full alchemized, and
free of space. Behold
The clear religion of
heaven!”
(Quotes taken from A
Thing of Beauty by John Keats)
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