A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOR EVER
World is a diverse place. People belonging to different parts of the world have different habits, culture, traditions, value, language and social manners. There living standards, the people they meet, the way they think all differ from each other. However, what is strikingly common in them is their love for beauty – both created by the nature and created by humans.
From very ancient times, man has developed and appreciated beauty in different shapes and forms. This can be well understood through the excavations done in various parts of the world. Each ancient site that has been excavated has series of decoration and paintings that can be seen. These paintings depicted story of mankind, their culture and their tradition. The paintings also represented the societal nature of those times and thus, clearly show the love of man towards the beauty and decoration. It is the result of his love for the art and architecture that we see great historical monuments beautifully decorated and designed in front of us. Tajmahal, one such example needs no introduction about its beauty and magnificence. The famous painting of Mona Lisa, Beethoven’s symphonies and great literature, poems and lyrics all over the world, depicts how much we are surrounded by beautiful things. Each one of us has a sense of appreciation towards beautiful thing, and fortunately we have always been surrounded by such things related to beauty.
A beautiful thing once created becomes moment of lifetime. Even if we witness a beautiful thing for just a moment, its memory lasts long forever. A beautiful picture, a rose or a beautiful landscape seen for twenty minutes lasts longer, but when it is recalled joy becomes twenty fold. It also requires the gift of imagination to revive and relive the happy moments. Different beautiful things are perceived by different people. A man deeply involved in arts would always like to make a collection for beautiful things. Man’s fascination for precious stones, gems and other precious metal forces him acquire things of lasting beauty. A person who is not admirer of beauty shall always criticise these stuff. However, a beautiful thing dispatches a sense of forgetfulness among its viewers. A poet rightly said in one of his poems:–
“O Attic shape! Fair attitude! With brede of marble men and maidens overwrought, with forest branches and the trodden weed Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought as doe’s eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st ‘Beauty is truth, truth is beauty’ – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
The poet describes here that even if the story of the village that is mentioned in the poem gets lost in the history, the art shall remain forever. The theme of the poem remains that art is eternal and beauty is the only truth about art. We all are surrounded by beautiful things. Nature has unending saga that embarks its beautifulness, starting from the chirruping of birds, the sun rise and the sun set, the full moon, the rainbow, the cluster of stars, the alteration of seasons, even a soft touch on the innocent face a newly born baby, all these things add up to the beauty of nature. A life without these beautiful things would be unimaginable. A thing of beauty packed up in a beautiful art form shall always remain a matter of joy. One of the most famous names of English Literature, the romantic poet Wordsworth used to regularly visit beautiful lakes, forests, mountain peaks. He always witnessed different atmospheric beauties around him, the life of animals, their movements, rainbows, flowers, sunlight and many other things. All these incredible things left a long lasting memory on his life, that’s why he mentions in his poem:
“For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood
They flash across thy inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude?
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils”
However, in the race of development and making career, humans have forgotten to appreciate the basic structure of the nature. The admiration of its beauty is long gone and they are purposefully killing and destroying the natural beauty that has been bestowed upon him. All these beautiful things around us improve our optimism and uplift our spirits. Destruction at such a large scale destroys the basic balance of nature. In the era of rapid urbanisation, beauty admirer hardly sees anything to appreciate. The chirpings of the birds is long gone, the dew drops on flower is no longer visible, the green surrounding has been replaced by concrete jungle, sunlight passing through the woods no longer remain a joy to watch. Not only the land beauty, but human interventions have also disturbed the oceanic beauty of the nature. The clear, vast and beautiful oceans are now perceived more as a dump yard of garbage. The blue color has been lost by the increased concentration of waste materials in the ocean. Also, the marine biodiversity has depleted to large extent.
This is the time humans should consider the fact a true beauty makes him forget the transient reality and links him with eternity. Anything beautiful connects the viewers so much that he gets lost in it completely. It is just the sense of beauty that attracts tourists from different parts of the world to see Tajmahal in India, Hanging Garden of Babylon, pyramids of Egypt, Statue of Liberty in USA or Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, etc. It forms a great experience to see the world uniting to admiring beauty at such times of race of superiority. A poet rightly suggests the healing power of beautiful objects found in the nature in the first stanza in one of his poems through the following words:–
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness: but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health and quiet breathing.
Yes in spite of all some shape of beauty moves away the pall from our dark spirits”.
