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| Peeling Petals by Andrew Colgan on Flickr |
- "It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live."
- "Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time."
- "We all have a weakness for beauty."
- Albert CamusIt is not blood nor pain that shakes the ground
oh no, it's beauty that disturbs our days.
That mere life might evoke a beggar's praise,
ay, that is where the tragedy is found.
For earth's dear hopes spin meaningless around
and manage but to conjure dull malaise?
Our joy is weak; she has but numbered days;
she sickens when the petals all are browned.
Can there exist a charm that will not break?
Some great thing whose promise is not so cruel
as those dreams that wither when you wake.
Some great hand that might work the broken tool
of beauty, end all ends, and quench our ache:
to love one's life and yet not play the fool.
After reading this to my wife, I had to edit two of the lines that were not very clear. The lines "For how can man allow the mindless sound
ReplyDeleteof birds to conjure feeling 'cept malaise?" were replaced with "For earth's dear hopes spin meaningless around
and manage but to conjure dull malaise?". I felt that the first version was needlessly cryptic.
I like your edits. I like this a lot. I still can't get over your mastery of rhyme.
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