_Beauty_


Among all the ugly mugs of the world we see now and then a face
made after the divine pattern. Then, a wonderful thing happens
to us; the Blue Bird sings, the golden Splendour shines, and for
a queer moment everything seems meaningless save our impulse to
follow those fair forms, to follow them to the clear Paradises
they promise.

Plato assures us that these moments are not (as we are apt to
think them) mere blurs and delusions of the senses, but divine
revelations; that in a lovely face we see imaged, as in a
mirror, the Absolute Beauty--; it is Reality, flashing on us in
the cave where we dwell amid shadows and darkness. Therefore we
should follow these fair forms, and their shining footsteps will
lead us upward to the highest heaven of Wisdom. The Poets, too,
keep chanting this great doctrine of Beauty in grave notes to
their golden strings. Its music floats up through the skies so
sweet, so strange, that the very Angels seem to lean from their
stars to listen.

But, O Plato, O Shelley, O Angels of Heaven, what scrapes you do
get us into!




_The Power of Words_