Kahlil Gibran
Richard johnson Art
Music:
STAMATIS SPANOUDAKIS - St. John's Tear
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find
her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver
of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say,
"Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory
she walks among us."
And the passionate say,
"Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us
and the sky above us."
The tired and the weary say, "Beauty is of soft
whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint
light that quivers in fear of the shadow."
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting
among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and
the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall
rise with the dawn from the east."
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say,
"We have seen her leaning over the earth from
the windows of the sunset."
In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with
the spring leaping upon the hills."
And in the summer heat the reapers say,
"We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves,
and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes
and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark,
nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of
angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils
her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Beauty is the radiance of being
Nicholas Gordon
Beauty is the radiance of Being,
Opening a seam of inner sky.
Now we pause a moment beyond seeing,
Not at the heart of things but quite nearby,
In fields where all our deepest longings lie.
Each of us becomes a thing of beauty
As we are touched by love's unearthly grace,
Not meaning to transcend our chosen duty,
Demanding nothing more than we embrace,
More lovely than our hands or eyes can trace.
As ordinary days are filled with music,
Rejoicing in the glory of a song,
Kind hearts can dwell in beauty if they choose it,
Unseen by those who anger and do wrong.
So may love bring you beauty all life long.
When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats
Richard Johnson Art
WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry,
and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order
that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of
the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their
beauty - they merely move it from their faces into their
hearts.
Martin Buxbaum
