Category Archives: beauty

So fancy is the world.

beauty, poetry,

New housemate Bea has been browsing my bookshelves, which I encouraged her to do; it’s always a little sad to think of how lonely all those books are, the ones that have been in the same place for months or years without me even touching them, much less taking them down to look inside. One morning she was reading in a collection of Mary Oliver’s work, and when she discovered this poem below she brought it to me to read, too. We liked the part about stones, because we are great collectors of them. And the singing — and the silence.

THIS WORLD

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open
and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

-Mary Oliver

The birches in deathless marble.

beauty, poetry, summer, winter,

I SOUGHT THE WOOD IN WINTER

I sought the wood in summer
             When every twig was green;
The rudest boughs were tender,
            And buds were pink between.
Light-fingered aspens trembled
            In fitful sun and shade,
And daffodils were golden
            In every starry glade.
The brook sang like a robin—
            My hand could check him where
The lissome maiden willows
            Shook out their yellow hair.

“How frail a thing is Beauty,”
            I said, “when every breath
She gives the vagrant summer
            But swifter woos her death.
For this the star dust troubles,
            For this have ages rolled:
To deck the wood for bridal
            And slay her with the cold.”

I sought the wood in winter
            When every leaf was dead;
Behind the wind-whipped branches
            The winter sun set red.
The coldest star was rising
            To greet that bitter air,
The oaks were writhen giants;
            Nor bud nor bloom was there.
The birches, white and slender,
            In deathless marble stood,
The brook, a white immortal,
            Slept silent in the wood.

“How sure a thing is Beauty,”
            I cried. “No bolt can slay,
No wave nor shock despoil her,
            No ravishers dismay.
Her warriors are the angels
            That cherish from afar,
Her warders people Heaven
            And watch from every star.
The granite hills are slighter,
            The sea more like to fail;
Behind the rose the planet,
            The Law behind the veil.”

-Willa Cather

Nadezhda Bogomolova, Birch Trees

White is a Cloud Dancer.

art, beauty, quotes, , , ,

I ran across the news that Pantone’s choice for Color of the Year 2026 is WHITE! No, not just white, of course, but “Cloud Dancer” white. This is the first time they have chosen a shade of white as the color of the year. I’ve never heard about this practice before, in the 25 years that the company has done it, but that’s because the colors I am interested in are in my garden or my clothes closet, not in a lab.

I personally wouldn’t want to take too much time thinking about one shade of one color, because God has generously given us so many, all day every day, unless we are living in the Arctic. White is a color many of you are seeing a lot of already right now, and not on your walls. Have you thought about giving names to the different shades of snow you are shoveling, or watching fall outside your window?

It’s not because of my lack of snow that I take the trouble to post about this, but because of G.K. Chesterton. He probably wouldn’t think much of someone choosing a Color of the Year, but he did himself write about one color in particular, without regard to style or global trends. For him, it was not merely about things seen, but things unseen, the Cosmos and the Kingdom of God:

“White is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars.

“And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

“In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.”

-G.K. Chesterton, “A Piece of Chalk,” in Tremendous Trifles