Beautiful things would have poets . . . that they may re-exist and re-appear in the finer world of rational souls, and fill that realm with their fame.

Beauty is not a superfluous value.  Rather, it lies at the very heart of Reality.  For beauty lures us to activate that which makes us most human: our creative impulse.  We want somehow to possess beautiful things, but Beauty frustrates our attempts, forever eluding our grasp.  Like autumn leaves or sunset colors, She quickly hides herself almost as soon as She makes her first appearance. Gradually it dawns on us that the reason why we can never grasp and possess Beauty is because it is SHE who grasps and possesses US. 

For Beauty has her own subjectivity; She wants to be appreciated - worshiped, even - and remade into something fresh and new within our own divinely creative abilities.  Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it this way: "Every star in heaven is discontented and insatiable.  Gravitation and chemistry cannot content them.  Ever they woo and court the eye of every beholder.  Every person who comes into the world they seek to fascinate and possess, to pass into his or her mind, for they desire to republish themselves in a more delicate world than that which they occupy . . . They would have poets . . . that they may re-exist and re-appear in the finer world of rational souls, and fill that realm with their fame."

Photos: (Top) Prairie, Cottonwood trees, and The Snow Range, near Centennial, WY, October 14, 2014; (Middle) Rocks glowing at sunset, Vedauwoo Recreation Area, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY, October 14, 2014; (Bottom) Aspen trees and an unnamed rocky peak, Poudre Canyon, near Fort Collins, CO, October 13, 2014