XIV The Selling of a Soul

A poet struggling with the world’s condition,
prostitution of talents and the bondage
with which the bulk of men have been deceived,
I am not, I think, one who would say
that the selling of the soul would give respite.

But I did say to myself, and not once,
that I would sell my soul  for your love
if lie and surrender were needed.
I spoke this in haste without thinking
that it was black blasphemy and perversion.

Your forgiveness to me for the thought
that you were one who would take a poor creature
of a little weak base spirit
who could be sold, even for the graces
of your beautiful face and proud spirit.

Therefore, I will say again now,
that I would sell myy soul for your sake
twice, once for your beauty
and again for that grace
that you would  not take a sold and slavish spirit.

XXXVI

I should have sold my soul
without pricking of conscience for your sake:
because of your refusal I shall make of it steel
to split the rock of vicissitudes.

XXXVII

It is not the beauty of your body,
the beauty shaped in your face,
the beauty blinding my eyes
though it has gone beyond thought;
but the beauty of the spirit
that took form in your face,
the beauty of the spirit,
the heart-marrow of my love.

XXXVIII

I spoke about selling a soul
for your sake, o love:
blasphemy, blasphemy, ugly blasphemy,
a blasphemy of foolish rigmarole:
the soul sold for you would not become free,
the soul sold for your sake
would become enslaved.

XXXIX

As the slow embers of the fire
become a pure sparkling flame,
so my love for you
becomes a white adoration.

Sorley Maclean

My love for you has gone beyond poetry,
beyond imagination, beyond pride,
beyond love-talk, beyond hummed song,
beyond art, beyond laughter-music,
beyond joy, beyond loveliness,
beyond grief, beyond agony,
beyond reason, beyond nature,
beyond the great surging world.

Sorley Maclean

(Source: vodkathoughts, via girliknow)

(via ambitionsarelow)

I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree, I think. And he says—”you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.” And I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting—it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds; I don’t understand how it subtracts.

Richard Feynman,  ”The Beauty of a Flower” - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

(via inconspicuousrebel)

(Source: jerrymuffinbutt, via findyourlovely)