"The loveliness of earth is but like one rose flung from the Eden whence thy choice has excluded thee.
The wonders of earth are but the tapestry of the ante-chamber in the royal house thou hast abandoned.
All partial beauty was a pledge Of beauty in its plenitude: But since the pledge sufficed thy mood, Retain it! plenitude be theirs Who looked above! "O sharp despair! but since the joys of earth fail me, I take art.

Art gives worth to nature; it stamps it with man.

I'll take the Greek sculpture, the perfect painting of Italy--that world is mine!" "Then obtain it," said the voice: "the one abstract form, the one face with its one look--all they could manage.

Shall I, the illimitable beauty, be judged by these single forms?
What of that perfection in their souls these artists were conscious of, inconceivably exceeding all they did?
What of their failure which told them an illimitable beauty was before them?
What of Michael Angelo now, who did not choose the world's success or earth's perfection, and who now is on the breast of the Divine?
All the beauty of art is but furniture for life's first stage.

Take it then.