How to describe this beautiful day. “I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.” Walt Whitman – I Sing The Body Electric.
What was the last beautiful thing of nature you saw, not counting your loved ones.
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Carl Sagen
From “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
http://www.emersoncentral.com/beauty.htm
A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.
The ancient Greeks called the world {kosmos}, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion’s claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm.
Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) – Morning Has Broken


6 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 22, 2010 at 9:44 pm
gchyayles
On my way back from class yesterday (an hour and a half commute) there was a thunderstorm. Not exactly fun to drive in but the lightening was absolutely beautiful. The different shades of purple and blue were so mesmerizing (I promise I was focused on the road
). More evidence of what an artist our God is
September 23, 2010 at 1:13 am
edfromct
Gcy, I love watching thunder and lightning, but from the safety of my condo, not while driving.
The sense of wonder that faith will give us does lead to better appreciation of the great beauty found in the world around us.
September 23, 2010 at 6:16 am
Indian Lake Papa
Just did our trip to the Dakota’s! Saw many sights. The Bad Lands were spectacular!!
September 23, 2010 at 4:41 pm
edfromct
That was a great trip you and Mama had. I have never been the Badlands of the Dakota’s. The landscape does remind me of the Grand Canyon.
http://www.earthdocumentary.com/pics/us_badlands_national_park_south_dakota-01.jpg
September 28, 2010 at 8:15 pm
mandythompson
this a beautiful collection regarding beauty, even though the musician is a man named “cat”
You know, our leaves don’t change color like in New England. They just get brown & fall off… “The eye is the best of artists.” I wish I could see that rush of color over the next few weeks…
September 28, 2010 at 11:16 pm
edfromct
Mandy, Mr. Stevens was smart enough to change his name.
With both Jekyll and St. Simons islands nearby, your neck of the woods, Brunswick, Georgia, looks like one of the most beautiful spots on the plant.