TRIP TO ELTHAM PALACE POEM 25

Mankind has always been called to do something more than themselves. The artist, I think, is approaching that. Some like Michelangelo or those that sculpted for the baths in Bath did this on a grand scale. Reflecting life through the work of your own hands is also accomplished by gardening and even building a home. They say, the more reflectively you do this - through looking into yourself - the more mindful it is. This not only brings beauty to your life but more personal strength.

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“You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.” Henri Matisse

Doorway

It is not far from the shore,

But in ecstasies gasping and broad,

We are flung as if swimming in the

Ocean cold and broad strong in its depth,

And as likely to carry you as to drown

You in the soapy foam beneath the waves.

The chance is in the waves,

To escape is on its wing,

But to plunge is to risk,

And to plunder its depths,

Is to search the unknown,

And to succeed in stealing

What is not yours.

So gasping in the cold, vital and dull,

Do we escape or plunder?

No it is something else we seek,

It is our souls.

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.” Bertrand Russell