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

 

A PAINTING IS A PAINTING

A painting is a painting

It’s not like you or me

Nobody gets older  

No one ever sleeps. 

It’s a stillness made of life

With meaning in its air

You feel it as you watch it,

Even as you stare:

At those forever praying

Or lying nude aware

Not of us but God

And the artist never there.

We travel time to then

And then to us appears;

Time becomes transparent

And what is far comes near. 

Who gave their life to painting

That we can know life more?

The artist in his garret?

The model in her maze?

We think of things self-evident

When we observe those lives

Frozen in the minerals

Of pigments and the mind

But what of art’s intention?

Does it think or know the way?

The artist isn’t talking;

There’s nothing more to say. 

Who made a painting matter

Then vanished long ago?

Who gave their life to painting

So we enjoy life more?

John Sevcik