Beauty Is the Highest Good

Beauty is the highest good
Virtue is its own reward
Kindness softens every heart
Beauty is the highest good

Beauty is as beauty does
Nothing takes from excess much
Elegance returns the price
Beauty is as beauty does

Beauty is a balm in sun
Radiance as well as calm
Nothing ventured, nothing gained
Beauty is the finest wine

Beauty is the pride of place
How we waken in the maze
Like the song of mocking birds
Beauty is the good of grace

Beauty is the highest good
Art for art’s sake, if you could
Let the opening number play
Beauty is the highest good

Beauty is the highest good
Ring the anvil made of wood 
Going, going, going, gone
Beauty glimmers like the dawn

Beauty is the highest good
Give it money for its looks
Build it temples, charge to look
Beauty is the richest good

Beauty is the highest good
In the starving rustic shack
Or the garret atelier 
Beauty has us by the hook

Love is all that beauty good
Poor or rich it overlooks
Evolution rides along
Beauty is the highest good

John Sevcik

 

Germantown Nights

Across the street
Disco lights are spinning
In the second-floor bedroom.

I live in a house as old
As my father would be;
I am in the shell of his departure.
The plaster holds his bones in casts,
The stars recede on his fading words.

Across the street
They do not know their fathers
Are yet to die. Their fathers’ lights
Are dancing in the room
With their mother,
Like moths circling
Something bright
And hot.

John Sevcik