All Art Does But Consist In The

That The Mere Matter Of A Poem, For Instance--its Subject, Its Given Incidents Or Situation; That The Mere Matter Of A Picture--the Actual Circumstances Of An Event, The Actual Topography Of A Landscape--should Be Nothing Without The Form, The Spirit Of The Handling, That This Form, This Mode Of Handling, Should Become An End In Itself, Should Penetrate Every Part Of The Matter;mthis Is What All Art Constantly Strives After, And Achieves In Different Degrees.

She Is Older Than The Rocks Among Which She Sits; Like The Vampire, She Has Been Dead Many Times, And Learned The Secrets Of The Grave; And Has Been A Diver In Deep Seas, And Keeps Their Fallen Day About Her; And Trafficked For Strange Webs With Eastern Merchants, And, As Leda, Was The Mother Of Helen Of Troy, And, As Saint Anne, The Mother Of Mary; And All This Has Been To Her But As The Sound Of Lyres And Flutes, And Lives Only In The Delicacy With Which It Has Molded The Changing Lineaments, And Tinged The Eyelids And The Hands.

To Higher Or Lower Ends, They [the Majority Of Mankind] Move Too Often With Something Of A Sad Countenance, With Hurried And Ignoble Gait, Becoming, Unconsciously, Something Like Thorns, In Their Anxiety To Bear Grapes; It Being Possible For People, In The Pursuit Of Even Great Ends, To Become Themselves Thin And Impoverished In Spirit And Temper, Thus Diminishing The Sum Of Perfection In The World, At Its Very Sources.

Many Attempts Have Been Made By Writers On Art And Poetry To Define Beauty In The Abstract, To Express It In The Most General Terms, To Find Some Universal Formula For It.

A Certain Strangeness, Something Of The Blossoming Of The Aloe, Is Indeed An Element In All True Works Of Art: That They Shall Excite Or Surprise Us Is Indispensable.