Not mine (alas):
To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things--earth,
stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars--
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts,
frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality--
For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature
dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant--to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the
natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the
intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
Robinson Jeffers
3 comments:
Poetry magnifies the ugliness of beauty and the beauty of ugliness in such a way as to make each more accurate in their distortion than in actual reality.
Thanks for finding this. Hadn't seen it before. The kids and I pursue beauty foolishly, persistently, despite all sensible warnings to do housework, earn a living, etc. We will spend our last pennies on a camera or spend hours (the kids) reworking a poem when they should be studying for an exam.
The world is doomed, tragic, cruel, disappointing and yet also pregnant with possibility. Hideous in its suffering and yet beauty abounds. A friend who tends towards comfortingly anthropomorphic views of God describes every beautiful view or flower as a love letter from GOd that we can either savor or throw away heedlessly.
You may find http://www.dark-mountain.net/ interesting.
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