"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -
that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
- from "Ode on a Grecian Urn", by John Keats
Could John Keats be onto something much deeper than a surface lever subjective telling of beauty and truth? He was a seeker, a deeply felt searcher for words to describe the eternal beauty that did not fade, the light that did not dim, the scenes of the faery lands forlorn, over the perilous seas (from his "Ode to a Nightingale"). He dips into myth and story like a rich dredge of honey into the bowl; it's sweet and full of emotive and sometimes melancholic words arranged with intention and musicality - and experienced as lines of a poem.
Keats was seeking the everlasting - through invoking myth, spirit, flowers, birds, love, signs + sounds. He was deeply thoughtful and meditative. Could he not have understood a deeper thing than most people know today? That beauty draws us to something deeper, higher, and more than ourselves. We seek it, and it draws us in and points to that higher object, truth. Something universal and objective, clinging together along with the output that comes from beauty and truth, to complete the trinity of the transcendentals - goodness. These three pieces are all one of the same - they sync eternally, always there to cause you to pause in your finite time here in the mundane day to point you to the infinite. The maker, creator, and sustainer of all good, all the world.
Keats wasn't preaching. He wasn't a Christian from what I gather, yet he knew something about God and His creation - he could articulate it in his poems (even if he didn't realize it), often reaching deeper into truth than preachers. When you evoke beauty, you summon forth God and His goodness, petals shed the truth as you participate in seeing them, breathing their scented air, and taking in the many reminders that something so simple as flowers can remind us - of God's wisdom bestowed to us by way of such beauty. If we would only pay attention.
Notice how the lilies of the field grow;
they do not labor nor do they spin
thread for cloth...
- Matthew 6.28
Poets are good at paying attention. Writers are generally looking, searching, hunting for the words that transcend themselves to express a bigger idea. Keats is such an example, with a fluidity in his words that express beauty. Perhaps he wrote with nature and love swimming in his heart and set before his eyes, and at the same time God uses all the good we create to reveal His glory, even if not our initial thought. He leads us in our gifts to express that which can call/direct/point to Him. When we seek beauty that leads the thoughts to eternity, truth is revealed in the etch of the glass. It's delicate to be sure, and it can shatter if a falseness settles in with a rattle; the worldly desire for the pride/selfishness creep in very easily. Those and other vices that try to linger like fog over a lovely scene, but with a swift sigh and prayer the winds of truth clear the air, and settle into poetry that you read centuries later, grasping some small ounce of the sweetness Keats felt as he penned the words, which whisper of the eternal.
