All Things Wise and Beautiful : On the Artist...

The Artist co-operates with God in making increasingly larger numbers of people see the beauty of the world which these people could never see for themselves. The world, is of course, God's artistic masterpiece; but it is the artist who lends people eyes to see it with. Browning's Fra Lippo has the last word on the subject: -

For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times not cared to see.



In this sense, Oscar Wilde's paradox is perfectly true: that Nature imitates Art; for the majority of men see in Nature what Art has taught them to see in Nature. The fogs of London, said Wilde, were the invention of Whistler.

To love beauty therefore becomes to the artist, as an artist, his first duty. To love beauty, that is, to see it for himself first, and then to communicate it to others ; for love implies at once vision and reproduction.

It must be the first article in an artist's creed, as an artist, that beauty is the best interpreter of God to man ; that; when he has got hold of beauty, he has got hold of the surest key to the knowledge of God.


Keats has said that Beauty is Truth. Now, this is not true. But to us here, Beauty is, as Plato said, the splendour of Truth. The artist, as an artist, must be content with the splendour and, through this splendour strive to convey the truth. He has no business with truth such as the philosopher, for instance has. He has no concern with conduct as such, as the moralist, for instance, has. It is not his function to exhort men to good work, or to prove things ; but merely to exhibit them.


Sources:
Ist photo: Hale, Lancashire by William Davis
2nd photo: Old Man from Warton Crag by Daniel Alexander Williamson
3rd photo: Landscape, Hampstead by John Everett Millais
4th photo: The Stonebreaker by John Brett

All Things Bright and Beautiful: Texas Bluebonnets

One thing I love about Texas are the bluebonnets. It's so wonderful to spend a spring day by the hillside and watch the pretty array of bluebonnets all around...oh what a heavenly sight, what a heavenly feeling! Feast your eyes on this collection of bluebonnets photos courtesy of wildflowerhaven.com...

All Things Wise: The Seven Blunders of the World

The Seven Blunders of the World is a list that Mahatma Gandhi gave to his grandson Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper, on their final day together, not too long before his assassination. The seven blunders are:

• Wealth without work
• Pleasure without conscience
• Knowledge without character
• Commerce without morality
• Science without humanity
• Worship without sacrifice
• Politics without principle

This list grew from Gandhi's search for the roots of violence. He called these acts of passive violence. Preventing these is the best way to prevent oneself or one's society from reaching a point of violence.

To this list, Arun Gandhi added an eighth blunder, Rights without responsibilities.

All Things Bright and Beautiful / Trees / Three Poems

For a start I want to share the first song (All Things Bright and Beautiful) and the first poem (Trees) that I learned as a child. Christina Georgina Rosetti's poems were my childhood favorites and even until now I know them by heart. Nothing can erase the fond and joyful days of childhood and it is always fun to recall the memories of innocence....


All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small;
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings;
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.

The purple-headed mountain
The river running by;
The morning and the sunset,
That lighten up the sky.

The tall trees in the greenwood,
The pleasant summer sun;
The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them everyone.

He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell;
How good is God our Father,
Who doeth all things well.

By Cecil F Alexander/Martin F. Shaw




















Trees


I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.


~~Joyce Kilmer~~

Christina Georgina Rossetti

A Birthday

MY heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Remember

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Song

WHEN I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.